


Rowena's Quill

by Kressel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Department of Mysteries, Dumbledore's Army, F/M, Gen, Horcrux Hunting, Horcruxes, Nargles, Ravenclaw, The Quibbler, The Veil, Thestrals, Wrackspurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-30
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:21:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 82,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23214703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kressel/pseuds/Kressel
Summary: A multi-generational Luna Lovegood backstory, based on my predictions for the Ravenclaw horcrux. I wrote it before the publication ofDeathly Hallows, so I was incorrect, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Relationships: Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To Luna fans: I don't get to Luna until the middle of the story, but I hope you'll stick with it. I think you'll be pleased with her mother and grandmother. To Xenophilius fans: he's a brilliantly colorful character. I wish I'd created him. Luna's father in this story is a lot more lackluster. Sorry.

To the average Hogwarts student, the most boring subject in the curriculum was History of Magic. Ancient Runes was considered just as boring, but at least it was not a required subject. Every year, a few really brainy students signed up, but for the majority, Ancient Runes was blissfully ignored.

Tom Riddle, who was by no means an average Hogwarts student, considered them all fools. Without History of Magic, he would never have discovered that he was descended from Salazar Slytherin, and if not for Ancient Runes, he would never have been able to decipher the writings of his illustrious ancestor.

In Tom’s fifth year, Sophie Starkle became the new Runes professor. At the age of twenty-five, hers was the youngest appointment ever in Hogwarts’ history. This fact by itself was enough to pique Tom’s interest. Though only fifteen himself, he was determined to beat her record. He set out to discover the secret to her success.

Asking Slughorn was the first logical step. He loved talking about his past club members, and Tom was certain that Starkle must have been one of them. Slughorn really did have a knack for picking out talent.

“Sophie? Why, of course, she’s one of mine! Very clever girl indeed,” Slughorn told him. “Won the Ancient Runes award when she graduated Hogwarts and then went abroad to further her studies. And besides that extraordinary mind, she’s got charm, too!”

Tom decided to reserve judgment on that until he’d seen it for himself. At the outset, he was not at all impressed with Professor Starkle’s physical appearance. Her hair and robes were perpetually untidy and her inquisitive eyes seemed much too large for her face. But when he observed her with the faculty in the Great Hall at mealtimes, he began to understand her charm. Really, it was nothing more than flattery. Whenever an older member of the faculty – and they were all older – entered the Great Hall, she would stand up in deference and would not sit until the elder did.

It was an old-fashioned custom Hogwarts had dispensed with years ago, but near as Tom could tell, the professors loved it. Slughorn, of course, was a glutton for that sort of thing, but Professor Merrythought also seemed to be eating it up. Tom supposed that Merrythought was so old, she had probably been a student at Hogwarts when that custom was in place. Perhaps she thought it was high time she received her share of honorifics.

What really surprised Tom was that Dumbledore seemed as taken in by Starkle as everybody else. He noticed it on their first day of class. Dumbledore, apparently in his capacity as Deputy Headmaster, was observing Starkle teach. He did not arrive right away, but gave her a little time to introduce herself to the students.

“It is a pleasure to meet you all,” she said. “Already we have one thing in common: I studied under Professor Edenick as well, and I intend to model my lessons after his. I hope it will be a smooth transition for all of us.”

She paused and looked at the papers strewn around her desk. “Now where did I put that?” she murmured to herself.

“Disorganized,” thought Tom. It seemed Starkle was as careless with her possessions as she was with her personal appearance. Tom, who was meticulously attentive to both, could never respect someone like that. “If this is what Dippet hires,” he thought, “I’ll have no worries.”

At that moment, Dumbledore walked into the class. Starkle sprang up from her seat, and gave a meaningful look to the class that they should all do the same. Most were embarrassed, but all of them did it. Tom made sure to be the first. It had been over four years since he first met Dumbledore. He would do anything to erase that initial bad impression.

 _“Ciamar a tha sibh, neach-teagasig?”_ Starkle asked Dumbledore. It was a simple, “How are you, Professor?” and though their coursework was not usually in conversational Gaelic, everyone in class understood her.

 _“Tha mi gu math, tapadh leibh,”_ replied Dumbledore. His “Fine, thank you,” was also clearly understood. Then, twinkling at Professor Starkle, he continued in a fast and flowing Gaelic. Whatever he said, it made her giggle like a schoolgirl. Perhaps he was joking to put her at her ease, but he had not succeeded. She was very obviously nervous. She valued his opinion and wanted his approval.

“Weak, too,” thought Tom. But their banter made him curious. He wondered if these two linguists could speak the language of snakes.

Starkle spent a few more moments searching her cluttered desk. “Ah, here,” she said, and she gave the class their syllabus for them term. She knew she’d made a blunder, but she conducted the rest of the lesson competently. Tom saw that she knew her subject thoroughly, so despite all her obvious faults, he concluded that it was worth his while to try and get close to her.

Dumbledore also seemed impressed with her teaching, but was much less so at the way she kept her classroom. When she finished, he waved his wand over the room, and all the books on her shelves straightened themselves up, the bits of parchment peeking out of them folded themselves up neatly and disappeared from view, and the items strewn around her desk stacked into a pile and moved closer to her.

Starkle blushed awkwardly at this, but Dumbledore spoke in the same light-handed tone he used when correcting students in Transfiguration. He said something in an advanced Gaelic, but this time, Tom caught the gist of it. “Sharp minds ought to be free from keeping watch on their possessions.” Tom could not have disagreed more.

In the next few weeks of class, Tom did subtle things so that Professor Starkle would notice him. He knew his reputation would precede him. He was the brightest student in his year and a new prefect. And then there was his personal history, ideal for winning over soft-hearted fools given to that weakness known as “sympathy.” But with all of this, Tom felt he had to add something more. He always made sure to stand up whenever she entered the room, just the way she did for the other professors. His classmates had been following suit, and that was fine with Tom. It wouldn’t do to be too different. But he had been the first.

Starkle liked making them work hard. Despite what she said, she was not following the model of her predecessor Edenick. Her assignments were far more demanding. Tom found he could make good use of her lessons. With his comprehension expanding as it never had before, Slytherin’s words were becoming clearer and clearer. He wanted nothing more than to avenge his ancestor and restore his ways to Hogwarts.

The dispute between Salazar Slytherin and the other three founders was a subject the professors never mentioned. Tom learned about it entirely on his own. Slytherin wrote extensively about the necessity of keeping magical blood lines clean. Mudblood marriages were therefore a particular danger, and he exhorted wizards to keep careful control over their children’s friends. It was mainly for this reason that he sought to keep mudbloods out of Hogwarts. He concluded one of his writings with this: _Progeny, after all, is our way of leaving a lasting mark on the world. There is, of course, the Horcrux, darkest of all dark magic, but the immortality it affords is risky to say the very least._

“A wizard can achieve immortality?” thought Tom as he read those words. If so, then Slytherin had just given him the most priceless information he’d ever gleaned from the ancient scrolls. Tom had been on a quest to find the secret to defying death from the moment Dumbledore had told him he was a wizard. Death had cast a shadow over his life from his very first hour. If his mother hadn’t died, he would never have been abandoned in that filthy Muggle orphanage. He would have been raised as befit a wizard of his stature.

In his five years at school, however, Tom had never found anything on the subject, and he had put in a good deal of effort looking. But his ancestor had given him the answer!

“A Horcrux,” thought Tom. At last he had something to go on! He spent the next few days scouring the restricted section of the library, finding only one source in Runes so advanced he could not make sense of it. He needed a better translator, and Starkle would serve.

Approaching her was a delicate matter. Slytherin warned that it was a risky spell, which probably meant dark magic, and Starkle was the sort who’d fear dark magic. She might even report him to Dumbledore if she suspected he was dabbling in something he shouldn’t. So Tom had to be careful not to raise her suspicions. One unknown but pivotal word could be his undoing. He carefully made up a list of words from scattered places, some relating to the Horcrux and others from Slytherin’s writings. In this way, she would not see any pattern. He went to see her on the auspicious night of Halloween.

“Please come in, Tom. I didn’t expect to see any students tonight. What about the feast?”

“Oh, I”ll be there soon,” he said casually. “It’s just that I’ve come across some words and phrases in my reading that I hoped you could explain.”

“Of course! I must say it is a pleasure to have a student who takes such an interest in Runes. Reading outside the assignments is the best possible practice.”

“And there’s so much out there to practice with!” agreed Tom. He handed over his list. She held it so that sitting on opposite sides of her desk, both of them could see.

“This first one means ‘split.’ And these mean ‘subterranean’, ‘love’, ‘hidden’, ‘unpredictable,’ ‘chamber’ and ‘immortal.’” Starkle wrinkled her forehead as if in concentration as she continued. “Now these three are concepts that cannot be translated with a single word. They refer to different types of magical lineage. The first is a direct male line – all wizards in other words, the second is a direct female line, and last is a mix of both witches and wizards, and not in any particular order. Shall I write it all that in for you?” and before he could answer, she had bewitched her quill to write by itself.

“That’s an extraordinary quill,” said Tom. It seemed as a good a way to make light of his list as any.

With some pride in her voice, she replied, “That is really one of its lesser abilities, Tom. It knows many, many languages.”

Tom was now genuinely intrigued. “You bought it when you were abroad, then?”

“Oh, no. It was a gift from my mother when I graduated Hogwarts. I would never accept an enchanted item like this – one that can think for itself – from anyone unless I knew them well and trusted them completely. That is an important safety practice. Professor Merrythought must have told you.”

“Yes, she has, but thank you for the reminder,” said Tom. A magical object that could think for itself! Some how, some way, he would have to get his hands on that quill.

“There’s a very enjoyable way to keep up your vocabulary and translation skills, you know,” said Starkle. “It’s a parlor game called ‘Rack ‘n Rune.’ We had a Rack ‘n Rune club when I was a student at Hogwarts. I was hoping to start one again. Would you like to learn to play?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Tom, his eye on the quill.

“Now where did I put it?” Starkle said to herself. She turned around, and Tom’s fingertips grazed the quill’s black feather. She whipped back around and Tom quickly pulled his hand away. “There it is! Accio!” A long flat box flew to her desk. She put a small wooden rack beside each of them, then laid out an enormous bunch of blank tiles between them, touched her wand to her quill and told it, “Gaelic.”

In a moment, the quill was writing Gaelic Rune letters on the tiles.

“The object of the game is simple,” Starkle began explaining. “The tiles will scramble themselves, and you have to unscramble them and form words. Once you have a complete word, you send it to your rack. Here, I’ll show you.” She pulled together a few tiles, and spelled out _gràdh_. “Now that’s one from your list. I’m sure you recognize it.”

“Love,” said Tom, pronouncing the distasteful word.

Starkle nodded cheerfully, touched the tiles with her wand, and they flew to her rack. “You can play solitaire also, but when you’re playing competitively, speed is essential. Shall we?”

“Yes,” said Tom, considering the game a good investment of time. She would be so at ease, she would never even notice the disappearance of her quill.

After about a quarter an hour, Tom was ready to make his move. Slowly, he inched his fingers toward the quill and then -

“Late for the feast, aren’t you?” came Dumbledore’s voice from the open doorway.

Tom snatched his back just in the nick of time. Professor Starkle, meanwhile, had leapt to her feet, making Tom appear to lack proper reverence.

“Oh yes,” said Starkle apologetically. “I must have lost track of the time.”

“Rack ‘n Rune will do that to you,” said Dumbledore. Turning to Tom, he said, “Professor Starkle was captain of the Hogwarts Rack ‘n Rune team when she was a student here.”

“I was rather hoping to restart the club.”

“You may have an uphill battle there,” said Dumbledore. “Gobstones seems to be in vogue these days, thanks to Miss Prince. You must know her, Tom. She’s in your house.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tom, instinctively avoiding Dumbledore’s penetrating gaze. His manner was smiling and genial, but he made Tom uneasy, as though even his thoughts were being scanned.

“Rack ‘n Rune can wait, I think,” said Dumbledore. “Shall we go down to the feast?”

“Yes, of course,” said Starkle.

Tom had no choice but to follow. As they crossed over the threshold of her office, the tiles of the game returned to their box, and the quill flew into a drawer in her desk, which locked itself. Tom inwardly cursed Dumbledore for his uncanny way of turning up at the most inopportune times.


	2. Chapter 2

Tom was sure that Starkle’s quill would be the solution to his problems. It could probably translate all of Slytherin’s writings for him. He would never again have to ask for her help. It could think for itself! And translating runes was one of its lesser abilities! Perhaps it could teach him how to create a Horcrux. 

Taking it from her would be easy enough. She was always misplacing her things. It might be weeks before she even noticed it missing. The difficulty would be in getting past Dumbledore. He was hovering over her like a bird protecting its nestlings. 

Starkle brought the quill to class every day. Its black feather was unusually small, but otherwise, it looked perfectly ordinary. Sometimes she bewitched it to make notes for herself, but mostly it stayed unobtrusively on her desk. 

It wasn’t until after their first examination that he discovered another one of its powers. As a prefect, Tom had been asked to distribute the graded test scrolls, but he did not see Starkle’s writing on any of them. 

“To see your results,” she told the class, “Sign your name near the place you wrote it last time. Anyone who received less than “Acceptable” should see me privately. I will be in my office after dinner tonight.”

There were murmurings throughout the class as everyone read their results. The reactions were so telling, Tom wondered why she had bothered hiding the results in the first place. Predictably, his usual following of Slytherin boys had done badly. None of them had the knack for Runes; they only took the course because Tom did. But as always, they could serve his present purpose.

“What a waste of an evening,” complained Avery in their dorm room. He widened his eyes unnaturally in imitation of Starkle.

“She wrote I was on the border of acceptable,” said LeStrange, “so I’m free and clear.” 

“You two have to learn to seize the opportunities presented to you,” said Tom. “If you’re stuck going to her office tonight, think about what you can pick up there. She’s just spent a few years abroad. She’s bound to have a few trinkets around.”

“I suppose I could nick some of that invisible ink,” considered Avery.

“Wrong again,” sighed Tom. “Invisible ink reveals itself with a simple spell. Those test scrolls had something better on them. Hand yours over, LeStrange.”

The test scroll looked just as it did before LeStrange had signed it; Professor Starkle’s corrections were completely invisible.

“Watch,” said Tom. He signed his name. Professor Starkle’s writing did not appear. “Now you sign,” he told LeStrange. LeStrange did it and the Starkle’s comment, _bordering on acceptable_ appeared at the top of the scroll and disappeared in the next instant. “You see,” said Tom, “It will only reveal itself to the person she intended the message for. Now that’s some kind of advanced magic.”

“Bloody h-l, you’re onto of everybody all the time, aren’t you?” said LeStrange. Avery was also making sounds of admiration.

“Keep your wits about you and you’re always on top. Got that, Avery?”

But all Avery returned with that evening was a new test scroll. “I have to retake the test,” he told them.

“Didn’t you see _anything_ of interest?” asked Tom. As he expected, LeStrange took the bait.

“You’re pathetic, Avery. I’m going over there to tell her I want to improve my grade. And we’ll see what I bring back.”

And half an hour later, LeStrange had the quill.

“What does it do?” asked Tom, feigning doubt. He never let them know when they pleased him. That way, they kept trying. 

“It writes examinations, apparently. She was surprised to see me. ‘Delighted’ she said. But, naturally, not expecting me, she hadn’t prepared me a test scroll, and she had to do it right then and there. Touched her wand to this quill and off it went, writing me my own personalized test scroll.”

“Big deal,” said Avery, looking from the quill to Tom.

“I’ll bet it knows the answers,” said LeStrange. “Tom, would you?”

Tom said the incantations to remove anti-cheating hexes. It had taken him several months in their first year to work those out, but it had been well worth it. He never needed to cheat himself, but he performed the spells for those of his choosing whenever the teachers weren’t watching. It bought loyalty.

With the hexes removed, LeStrange touched his own wand to the quill. They watched and waited. The quill floated above the test scroll, but it would not write.

Avery snorted. “Some find.”

“It probably needs some incantation we don’t know.”

“It’s not worth much, then, is it?”

“Or maybe it’s the test scroll. Maybe there’s some new hex on it.”

“Likely story.”

“You’re asking for it, Avery.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

While they quarreled, Tom examined the quill. Up close he could see detail he’d never noticed in class. All around the nib was an intricate carving in the shape of a talon. Tom was sure it was solid gold. It was more valuable than he realized, but that meant it would be missed all the sooner. And LeStrange had been so ridiculously obvious. He had to get it out of their dormitory. 

“Nice try, LeStrange. I’m going to put it back and have a look around for something better.”

Avery and Lestrange were so surprised, they forgot they’d nearly been at fists.

“Put it back? Why?” they each asked at once.

“Because we can’t run any risks for things we can’t use. If they don’t serve, hide your tracks and move on.”

The two nodded in agreement, and as he walked out, he added, “And will you two stop fighting? It’s getting very boring.” 

He slammed the door behind him, pocketed the quill, and headed to the room where he had hidden Slytherin’s texts. It was the most magical place he had yet encountered within Hogwarts and was therefore his favorite. Whatever he needed while there, he found immediately.

“Here’s your new home,” he told the quill in case it could understand him. If it did, it gave no indication.

“Accio heritage!” he called out and the old book of Slytherin’s writings came floating toward him. He caught it and seated himself at the desk and chair the room always provided for him. Touching his wand to the quill, he whispered, “Go to it.”

The quill wrote furiously. It was so fast, Tom could not keep up with it. As soon as he’d made sense of a few words, more pages turned themselves and the quill moved further. Tom let it work at its own pace. He would read everything later. And then it stopped. 

“Move!” Tom commanded, but it did not. It remained as still as it had been for LeStrange in the dormitory. Tom was so angry, he could have torn it in two, but he would not be so foolish.

“Accio!” he called to the writings on the Horcrux. He set the quill to translate that. Again, it would not budge.

“D-n you!” he yelled, grabbing the quill. Then, suddenly, inexplicably, he was pushed from the room. Nothing like it had ever happened before. He assumed it meant that he and the quill needed to leave. Perhaps Starkle had noticed her quill missing. Hiding the quill deep in his robes, Tom made a reckless decision. He wanted to hear Starkle grovel and he wanted his prize near him as he did it. Pain of his own causing always gave him intense pleasure. He raced down the stairs to her office.

He stopped short outside her closed door. There was so much noise coming from behind it that the sound of his own footsteps had been pretty well muffled. Starkle must have been turning over every object in her office in search of the quill. She was also talking to somebody. Tom had a sinking feeling in his stomach that it might be Dumbledore.

“I’ve always been hopelessly disorganized. My mother always said it would cause me grief one day, but I’ve always been careful about _this_.”

“Sophie,” said the calm voice of Professor Merrythought, “you said you saw students here alone today. Which ones?”

“Miss Hornby, Smith, Avery, and LeStrange, but if you are thinking one of them stole it to cheat, it is impossible. The quill has too much respect for knowledge to allow anyone to come by it dishonorably.”

“That may be, but your students don’t know that.”

“It’s only a matter of time before LeStrange is implicated,” thought Tom, fingering the quill. 

“It was a family heirloom,” said Starkle, her voice breaking. “It was handed down from mother to daughter ever since – ” but she could not finish and burst into tears. 

Tom reveled in the sound of her sobs. He lost all sense of time and place, and heard only the pain. Professor Merrythought’s voice brought him to the present.

“Sophie, look up.”

Starkle sniffled and then exclaimed, “Oh, Professor, you found it! How can I ever thank you?”

Tom felt around his pocket. The quill was gone.

“I did not find it. It simply reappeared. That’s quite an honor code it has. It will not let anyone cheat and it returns itself to its rightful owner.”

“I didn’t know. It has never gone missing before. Oh, thank you, Professor, for being such a comfort!”

“Not at all. I am glad you have it again. Now we must question the students. I’d imagine at least one of them will have to pay for his crime.”

“Oh, no,” pleaded Starkle. “I would much rather keep this incident between ourselves. It makes me look so foolish . . . and green. I’d much rather Professor Dumbledore, and Professor Dippet, didn’t know. I have the quill, and that is really all that matters.”

“I disagree, but I will respect your decision,” said Professor Merrythought. “If you wish me to keep it quiet, I certainly will.”

“Oh, thank you, Professor. How will I ever cope when you retire?”

“I assure you, you’ll do just fine.” 

Starkle began weeping again and thanked Merrythought repeatedly. Tom walked away. He had heard all he needed to hear. He didn’t believe in the honor code for a moment. The quill disappeared when he lost concentration. 

“Next time,” he told himself, “will be very, very different.” 

Tom ran back up the stairs to check on what the quill had translated for him. It had gone into painstaking detail about Slytherin’s contributions to Hogwarts. Slytherin was proudest of a subterranean chamber he created beneath the castle, designed to defend it against enemies for centuries. It was the dwelling place for a deadly monster under his sole control. No enemy could ever vanquish the castle as long as the monster breathed, and its life expectancy was hundreds of years.

Knowing the monster would outlive him, Slytherin was training his son to succeed him as master of the chamber, and he expected his son to do the same with his grandson in the next generation. The monster had already been commanded to respond only to wizards of the Slytherin bloodline, and it was for this reason that Slytherin returned to Hogwarts despite his differences with the other founders. The chamber was his magnum opus, and he would not leave it unattended.

“I must find it,” thought Tom. “It is my right, my destiny.”

Then, just because it pleased him, Tom reached for _The Genealogy of the Hogwarts Four_ , a book he’d appropriated from the school library. He spent many hours poring over it, rereading the long list of names that took him from Merope Gaunt all the way back to Salazar Slytherin. He had even added his own name to the list.

“What other treasures await your heir?” Tom whispered, putting aside the book and looking again at Slytherin’s own writings.

He read about principles of magical lineage. Slytherin wrote that a wizard’s powers followed that of his father’s and a witch’s that of her mother’s. These sorts of direct father-to-son and mother-to-daughter lines were the most powerful in wizardry. This did not sit well with Tom. His magic came from his mother. 

“I will prove him wrong,” thought Tom. “If I can control the monster in the chamber, then I will achieve everything he wanted for his successors. It will be undisputable. I am the Heir of Slytherin.”

He looked again at his own name in _The Genealogy of the Hogwarts Four_ and flipped the pages backwards to reread Slytherin’s name. But he did it a little too quickly and went back a page too far. He found himself looking at the end of Rowena Ravenclaw’s genealogy, and what he saw made him go cold. The final name listed was Sophie Starkle.

“It can’t be!” he exclaimed, “That blubbering dimwit cannot be the Heiress of Ravenclaw!” He ran his finger back over the names. It was undeniably clear. Sophie Starkle was the last of a long line of witches tracing directly back to Rowena Ravenclaw herself. 

Tom then scanned the list of husbands, and found a shocking number of mudbloods. That explained Starkle’s weakness. Her blood and powers had been tainted for generations. He had the taint of only one mudblood, and that impurity would end with him. He would never do the fool thing of marrying and having children. He would create Horcruxes and have real immortality. 

Feeling vindicated in his superiority, Tom then remembered the quill. Only half an hour ago he had been holding it in his hand. The image of the slender black feather and the golden carving beneath it came to his mind.

“A raven’s claw,” he thought. Why hadn’t he realized before? Starkle had said it was a family heirloom, but he never would have guessed she came from so illustrious a family. What powers that quill must have! Tom simply had to own it. Anyone as careless as Starkle didn’t deserve to keep it.

Tom looked at what else the quill had translated for him, but his mind was racing. He could not concentrate. All he took in was a short rhyme that concluded the book. 

_Ephemeral justice, elusive truth  
take time to be uncovered,  
but truth wills out in many years,  
and all will be discovered._

He supposed this was some sort of encouragement, a message that in time, he would learn all the secrets he had to know. That was encouragement he sorely needed. As instructive as the night had been for him, it had left many more questions unanswered. He now had three goals before him: to acquire the Ravenclaw quill, to become master of Slytherin’s chamber, and to create Horcruxes, but he had yet to form a clear plan of action.


	3. Chapter 3

After a few days of careful thinking, Tom decided that taking the quill would be the simplest task before him. He’d been perfecting his skills in re-appropriation for as long as he could remember. The quill was the most valuable thing he’d ever sought, so it would be very closely guarded, but at least he had some experience to guide him. As to finding the hidden chamber and creating a Horcrux, he had nothing guiding him at all, but he hoped the quill would help. 

Tom knew that if he was going to take the Ravenclaw quill, he would have to get close to Starkle, and as more than just a student. He needed a friendlier setting, so when he saw signs around the castle announcing a Rack ‘n Rune club, Tom made sure to attend.

The meeting was not in Starkle’s office, but in a small classroom. When Tom arrived, Starkle and a gangly-looking girl were the only two there. Starkle was already setting the game up between them.

“So happy to see you, Tom,” she said, looking up. “This is Oddwalla Lagglast, a seventh year Hufflepuff.”

Tom and Oddwalla nodded to each other. And for the next ten minutes, the three of them sat alone. Starkle prattled on endlessly, desperate to fill the silence as she waited for more students. Only Dumbledore arrived. Tom needed no prompting; he was on his feet as quickly as Starkle.

“Good evening,” said Dumbledore. “Ah, four of us, perfect for a round of Rack ‘n Rune.”

“Perhaps we should wait. There may be others coming,” said Starkle. 

“I doubt it,” said Dumbledore gently. “Tonight is the opening of the new Quidditch stadium in London. I daresay all the students are huddled in their common rooms, listening to the broadcast of the match.”

“Oh, was that tonight?” asked Starkle.

Tom did not know how she could have missed it. For the past week, every student he passed seemed to be in deep discussion of the upcoming match. Of course, Starkle’s mistake worked well for his plan. The only hitch so far, and a big one at that, was Dumbledore. Perhaps some well-placed flattery might wear down his guard. 

“I understood, sir, that the stadium copied many of the spells used in the Great Hall.”

“Indeed,” said Dumbledore, “it takes more than a few enchantments to simulate outdoor weather indoors. Who’s your favorite team, Tom?”

Tom fidgeted. He did not trouble himself to follow sport or root for any team. That was for trivial minds and he considered himself above it. But he sensed in Dumbledore’s question a criticism, as though not following a team was some sort of shade in his character.

“The Wasps,” said Tom. It was Avery’s favorite.

“My brother likes the Cannons,” said Oddwalla, “but they’re not playing tonight.”

“Nor is my favorite, Puddlemere United,” said Dumbledore, “but talking of teams, shall we play in teams now, boys against girls?”

“Yes, let’s,” said Starkle, and they all sat around the board to play.

In any other arrangement, Tom might have enjoyed himself. He actually liked Rack ‘n Rune; it was a challenging game of wit and speed. If he’d been playing on his own, in competition with Dumbledore and the others, it would have suited him perfectly. But working toward a common goal with another person was never to his liking. Tom preferred people to work toward _his_ goals. And at the moment, Dumbledore was the biggest obstacle to his goal of taking the quill.

Because the teams were so evenly matched, the game seemed to last hours. For Tom, it was excruciatingly tedious, and he dared not even look at the quill lest Dumbledore see what he was after. When Oddwalla yawned, Dumbledore suggested they call it a draw.

Starkle sighed and reluctantly agreed. “Well, thank you so much for coming. It was a good game.”

“I’ll help you put the game away, Professor,” said Tom.

“Why, thank you, Tom,” said Starkle.

Lagglast left, but Dumbledore remained. He and Starkle began to speak in the most bizarre language that Tom had ever heard. It was unearthly; they sounded as though their heads were submerged underwater. But from the emotional cues, Tom understood that Starkle was disappointed in the low turn-out, and Dumbledore was comforting her. Tom was relieved he couldn’t understand their conversation; nothing was as boring as emotions.

After a while, though, it seemed interminable. How much comfort could Starkle possibly need for something so insignificant? When would Dumbledore finally shut up and get going? Tom didn’t want to grab the quill with him present. He could not forget their first meeting when Dumbledore sent his cupboard up in flames. 

But Tom’s fingers were itching. He had to do _something_ with that quill. He touched it with his wand and in a low voice commanded it: “Write ‘Tom Marvolo Riddle.’” In mere seconds, it wrote each letter of his name on a different Rack ‘n Rune tile. The tiles scrambled themselves, and as though he were playing a solitary game, Tom pulled out three tiles and placed them on a rack, spelling, “I AM.” Then, looking at the remaining tiles, he came up with another word: “LORD.” 

“I AM LORD,” he read. The phrase dazzled him. It befit his noble ancestry and flew in the face of the Bible verses he’d been forced to learn at the orphanage.

“ _I_ am Lord,” he whispered to himself. 

He glanced up at Dumbledore and Starkle, but they were engrossed in their own conversation. He looked down at the game. Finally, he would rid himself of that despicable Muggle name. He placed the tiles in different combinations. He first spelled “MORT” which pleased him because it hinted at immortality, and then shuffled around the remaining tiles.

He considered then rejected “DEVOL.” Mrs. Cole sometimes called him “devil” when she was drunk or in a temper, but that was mere Muggle mythology. A wizard was much greater.

“Mix,” he told the tiles, and seemingly on their own, they formed the word, “LOVED.” Tom glared at it. He loved nobody, and nobody had ever loved him. He again shuffled the tiles, this time by hand, settled on “VOLDE,” and sent it up to the rack.

“I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.” Tom stared at his creation. It was a name that commanded respect, even fear. It was perfect. 

“Well, at least one student enjoys Rack ‘n Rune,” said Starkle. Tom looked up and saw that both Starkle and Dumbledore were smiling at him. 

“Very much,” said Tom, quickly gathering the tiles and placing them in their box. The quill, which had just been sitting beside him, was now in Starkle’s hand. Tom’s loss of concentration had cost him again!

“Oughtn’t you be getting back to the dorm?” asked Dumbledore. “A prefect cannot miss curfew.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Tom, trying desperately to keep the hatred out of his voice. All he needed was a few moments alone with Starkle. Why was Dumbledore always in the way? 

“I’m so glad you enjoyed the game. I’ll call the next meeting for after the winter holiday,” said Starkle.

“I’ll be there,” said Tom.

For the next few days, Tom was bitter. Though he had a new name, he had no quill, no Horcrux, and no plan. Students were all buzzing about going home for the holiday, but all he had to look forward to was the orphanage. He tried to relieve himself by wielding his power as prefect and having students punished for merry-making, but the pleasure was short-lived.

Slughorn lifted him out of his doldrums. He was boasting to Tom about the Ministry officials he’d invited to his annual Yule party. Slughorn had been relentlessly pushing Tom in the direction of the Ministry since first year. Tom nodded politely and pretended to listen until Slughorn said the words “Unspeakable” and “Department of Mysteries.”

“An Unspeakable is coming to the party?” asked Tom incredulously. 

“Yes, dear boy, and I must say, it is a pleasure to see you excited about _something_. I should think my connections at the Department of International Relations were right up your street.”

“I am sorry, sir, but please, will you introduce me to the Unspeakable? I am fascinated by the Department of Mysteries.”

“As are we all, my boy, but you must know that the Unspeakables take vows of secrecy. As a person, Rowan Rockrimmon is as friendly a chap as you’d want to know, but when it comes to the Department, he’s as tight-lipped as the rest.”

“If they are so private, how did you get this – Mr. Rockrimmon – to agree to come to your party?” And realizing the clumsiness of his question, he hastily added, “After all, everyone knows it’s the place to be seen.”

Slughorn grinned, pleased with the compliment, and said, “Let us just say that there are certain attractions for him at Hogwarts.”

Tom did not know what those might be, but an Unspeakable was certainly an attraction to _him_. They studied matters relating to death, the soul, and immortality. If anyone could tell him about Horcruxes, it was an Unspeakable. But the thing would have to be planned with a great deal of cunning. He couldn’t simply ask directly, and especially not of a perfect stranger.

“I’d be much obliged if you would introduce me, sir.” 

“To be sure, my boy, but if you ask my opinion, the Department of Mysteries would be a waste of your talents. You’re a born leader! Unspeakables are powerful wizards, no question, but with a personality like yours, Tom, you belong in the spotlight.”

And true to his own plans for Tom, Slughorn directed his introductions his own way. When he arrived at the party, Slughorn seized him in a one-armed hug and boomed, “Come, my boy, let me introduce you to these lovely people!” 

Tom allowed himself to be pulled along. He would go through the motions until Slughorn finally presented him to the Unspeakable. He envisioned himself charming Rockrimmon, extracting secrets that all of wizadry longed to know. But for the moment, he found himself facing a thoroughly lackluster pair.

“This is Tom Riddle,” said Slughorn, “the most promising student I’ve seen in all my years here. He’s in his fifth year, but he’ll get my recommendation for Head Boy in seventh! Tom, let me introduce you to two rising stars of the Ministry.” Bowing slightly to the couple, he said, “Ladies, first.” The wizard bowed and the witch nodded. “This is Miss Minerva McGonagall of the Auror Department. Surely you must have read about her in the _Prophet_. She’s the youngest animagus in the registry!”

“Youngest in the registry, yes,” thought Tom, with a private surge of pride. Animal transfiguration was beyond NEWT level, but he had already mastered it. He doubted whether the law-abiding Auror before him had achieved it at so young an age. But then she was contemptible altogether. Indeed, he had read about her, the blood traitor. She was known for transforming into a common housecat and hiding in Muggle neighborhoods to fight the so-called crime of Muggle torture. Tom numbly shook her hand.

“And this is Barty Crouch, Department of International Relations. If ever you plan to travel abroad, dear boy, he’s the man to speak to. Helped Sophie with her itinerary, didn’t you, Barty?”

“A little,” said Crouch. “She stayed much longer than even she expected.”

“Where is Sophie?” asked McGonagall, craning her neck. “Oh,” she added sheepishly when she spotted her. Starkle was standing near a dark-bearded man who pointed out some mistletoe above them, causing her to blush, giggle, and jump away.

“Too soon, Rowan, too soon,” said Slughorn. Puffing himself up proudly, he said to his companions, “Quite a good connection, eh? I must admit, I wasn’t entirely sure about them myself – the age difference, you know – but it looks like she doesn’t mind. Rowan is certainly keen.” 

“Branching out into matchmaking, Horace?” asked Crouch.

“Yes, indeed. It’s my second-favorite pastime, after career building, of course. Speaking of which, let me tell the two of you two more about Tom . . . ”

Tom listened to Slughorn rattle on about him, and he nodded and protested in all the right places, but he had no interest in conversing with either Crouch or McGonagall. Starkle was monopolizing the Unspeakable, and it didn’t look as though he had a chance of getting him away from her. Slughorn, too, seemed to have conveniently forgotten his promise to Tom.

“I will stalk her in London this holiday,” Tom decided. “Better off the Hogwarts grounds anyway.” 

He smiled as thoughts of cruelty filled his mind. For keeping him from the Unspeakable, he would do more than just take her quill. He vowed revenge at the Heiress of Ravenclaw.


	4. Chapter 4

Sophie had met and fallen in love with Rowan Rockrimmon once before. It was the summer she was fifteen, one year after her father’s death, and she and Mother were staying at Lorelei’s By the Sea on holiday. Rowan had been there, too, but only for one month. Still, it was enough time for Sophie to fall in love.

She knew there were people who would call it a crush, or worse, a girl yearning for a father substitute. That was wrong. If anyone filled that role in her life, it was Professor Dumbledore. But it was true that her father’s death was what caused her to approach Rowan. She had been desperate to learn about the Next Phase, and who better to teach her than an Unspeakable? Generally, Unspeakables didn’t share much of what they knew, but he did share with her, and in the most caring and gentle way. She would love him forever for it. But she was fifteen and he was twenty-five, so it was a one-sided love from afar. 

In the guilelessness of youth, she probably revealed much more of herself than she should have. She had shared her deepest thoughts with him, partly in a quest for knowledge, but partly because she wanted to show off how clever she was. The recollection embarrassed her now. Boasting was a loathsome trait, and the insights of a fifteen-year-old girl would necessarily sound shallow and immature to a fully-qualified wizard. Yet she could not erase the memory of one moonlit night by the shore when he had called her profound. How she cherished that moment!

She wondered if he remembered it. It seemed unlikely. But she did believe that he meant what he said, even if all he saw back then was potential and not actual wisdom. Now she had the mind of a grown woman, and she was getting a second chance. It was a dream come true. Seeing him at Slughorn’s party brought back all the old feelings. Her mind had matured, but her heart was unchanged. She fell in love with him all over again, and best of all, he hadn’t sought the company of anyone else all night.

Now she was back in London in the home where she was raised, getting ready for their first date. She had never been so grateful for Pudders, her mother’s house elf, as she sat pulling tangles out of her hair. Even with elf magic, it hurt, but the mirror told her the effect was well worth it.

“What I don’t understand, miss,” said Pudders when she had finished, “is why you don’t put your own powers to work on it yourself.”

“I forget,” Sophie said plainly.

The doorbell, a stone bird which came to life with the touch of a wand, squawked. 

“That’s him! Oh, Pudders, how do I –“ but before she could finish the question, Pudders had already gone to the door. Sophie stood up when she saw him, just as she would have for any professor or elder. She respected him for his knowledge and she wanted him to know it.

“Good evening,” he said. “Are you ready?”

Sophie drew in breath as she took in his appearance. He was wearing a bowler hat like the Muggle men and a black fur-trimmed cloak like the wizards of Northern Europe. It was an unusual combination, but he made it look elegant. Her voice failed her. She, who was fluent in so many languages, was speechless. She nodded.

“Good. Do you have a nice, warm cloak? I hope you fancy an evening outdoors.”

“Outdoors? I mean, yes, I have one. Oh, Pudders, would you?”

Pudders brought her warmest cloak, fur-trimmed like his, but white. Sophie wondered if with their opposite coloring, they complemented each other or clashed.

“Good night, Mother,” she called as they walked out.

“Shall I warm up your robes for you?” asked Rowan. 

Before she could answer, he waved his wand over her, and said, “Caliente.” Her cloak was toasty warm.

“Let’s begin at Diagon Alley, shall we?” He apparated and she followed. Because it was such a cold night, the usually lively street was almost empty. The Leaky Cauldron, however, was filled to capacity. She knew it could expand to fit them, but she’d been hoping for more privacy.

“Have you been to Muggle London much?” asked Rowan, walking past the pub without giving it a glance.

“Hardly at all,” said Sophie, intrigued by whatever was awaiting her.

“Well, I spend quite a lot of my leisure time amongst Muggles. It makes keeping Department secrets that much easier. Nobody bothers me for answers when they don’t know I’ve got any.”

“Being an Unspeakable has its drawbacks, then,” said Sophie, “honorable as it is.”

“No, it’s not the life for everybody,” he said gravely. Sophie wondered if he was telling her this as a warning, and then she chastised herself for assuming too much too quickly. Rowan, meanwhile, was smiling again, and when the reached the brick wall that would lead them out of Diagon Alley, he conjured two pairs of boots with blades on their soles.

“What are these for?” Sophie asked as he handed her the smaller pair.

“They’re called skates. Muggles use them to glide over ice.”

Sophie examined the thin, silvery blades. “How is that possible without magic?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea. I’ve put a balancing charm on these. I’ve never actually done it before, either, but I’ve always wanted to try.”

Sophie giggled as they crossed through the brick wall.

“Is the cloak warm enough for you?” he asked.

“Yes . . .very . . .thank you.”

They walked on through the streets that were almost as empty as Diagon Alley, passing only a few Muggles, most of whom ignored them, though some stared at their cloaks and sniffed, “Tourists!”

“From closer and yet further than you think!” said Rowan, though Sophie was the only one who heard him. She laughed.

They reached what Rowan called an “ice rink,” which was a sort of ballroom floor made of ice. The Muggles, wearing boots like theirs, glided in circles around the rink, mostly as couples. Some were as graceful as thestrals in flight, but others looked to be clinging to their partners for dear life. Sophie was grateful for Rowan’s balancing charm.

Their first few circles around the ice were exhilarating. Skating really was a lot like flying, but not quite as fast-paced, which suited Sophie just fine. She was never much of a flyer, but she did remember Rowan on the Quidditch pitch that summer at Lorelei’s.

“This is fun!” she cried, and for the first few rounds, all they spoke about was the novelty of skating. After they had gotten used to it, Rowan asked, “How was your first term teaching at Hogwarts?”

“Wonderful, mostly. I did have one upsetting experience, though. Something very valuable was taken from me, though it returned itself to me shortly afterward.”

“Interesting enchantment.”

“Isn’t it? And I wasn’t even aware of it. My quill had never gone missing before. I was very lucky.” In a serious tone, she added, “I haven’t told my mother about this incident, so please don’t mention it when we get home.”

“I can keep a secret,” he said with a wry smile.

She felt like the world’s biggest fool. Had she forgotten to whom she was speaking? He kept the secrets of the beyond, and here she had made such an issue of this inconsequential thing.

He must have noticed her change in mood because he said, “Please don’t look that way. I like putting the weight of the Department behind me. That’s why we’re here.” He took her hand in his, and they continued skating in circles, just like all the Muggle couples around them. His touch was electrifying.

“Do you remember that game you used to play at Lorelei’s?”

“Rack ‘n Rune? I practically grew up on it.”

“I’m sure you’ll beat me now as then, but I’d like to play you sometime.”

“With pleasure.”

She slid a little, but Rowan grabbed hold of her. “Oh, my. I didn’t conjure these skates to last permanently, just in case we didn’t like skating. The balancing charm is wearing off, I’m afraid.” 

“I don’t mind,” she said, which was certainly the truth. Being held by him made her feel warm all over, much warmer than her bewitched clothing. Sophie would have been perfectly happy to spend the rest of the evening like that, but the charm on Rowan’s skates was wearing off, too, and he was also beginning to slide around ungainfully. The two of them fell, one on top of the other, onto the cold hard ice. Except for the dampness, it was not entirely unpleasant.

The Muggle in charge of the rink thought differently. “Off the ice, you two! You’re blocking everybody!” The Muggles in the rink all laughed.

“Follow me!” said Rowan, “We’ll crawl our way out.” And hand over hand, slowly and clumsily, they did.

“You suddenly forgot how to skate, eh?” the Muggle in charge said gruffly.

“Everyone is staring,” whispered Sophie as they unlaced their skates. 

“Well, yes, that often happens in Muggle London. We don’t know all the rules, so we make mistakes.”

Sophie nodded. “Wherever I’ve traveled, I’ve found there was a learning curve. I made the most dreadful faux pas developing my Mermish accent, but the Merpeople were more patient than these Muggles.”

“You forget they don’t realize we need their patience. They think we’re just like them. But otherwise, did you like skating?”

Sophie went warm again at the thought of holding his hand. “I liked it very much.”

“Good. Are you up for trying a Muggle restaurant? Some of these Muggles can cook better than house elves.”

“I’d love to.”

As they walked through the streets, their skates became lighter and lighter. They finally vanished at a place called Vauxhall Road. No Muggles seemed to take the slightest notice.

There was a restaurant nearby as crowded as the Leaky Cauldron. “I’ve never tried this place, but Muggle cooking never seems to fail. They have an expression: ‘cooking from scratch.’ I don’t know what ‘scratch’ is, but it’s so good, you’ll think it’s magic.”

He pointed to a menu, which was posted on the inside of a glass window. Sophie studied it the items listed there, some unfamiliar but others not, and then a reflection in the glass caught her eye, and she turned around.

“I think I just saw Tom Riddle going into that shop across the street.” 

“Tom Riddle?”

“One of my students. Best in his year, actually. One of Professor Slughorn’s picks. He was at the party.” 

“Were there other people at that party? Funny, I noticed only one.”

Sophie blushed. They went into the restaurant. The food was as delicious as he said, and the conversation charming. When he finally brought her to her doorstep, it was too late for a game of Rack ‘n Rune.

“Another night?” asked Rowan, and Sophie eagerly agreed. She went inside feeling it was one of the most magical nights of her life.

Her mother was waiting up for her.

“Well, what do you think of him?” Sophie asked anxiously.

Gazing at her steadily, her mother replied, “It’s a hard life being an Unspeakable’s wife. Perhaps not as risky as marrying an Auror, but risky nevertheless.”

Sophie turned away, embarrassed. “Mother, we’ve had only one date. We’re not talking about marriage yet.”

“You will,” her mother replied. “You will.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sophie woke up the next morning with an idea for her next date with Rowan. Now that he had treated her to such a wonderful night, she would return the favor and entertain him. Since he liked Muggle cooking, she would try her hand at it. She bounded out of bed and rushed downstairs to the kitchen where Pudders was already busily making breakfast. 

“Do we have any Muggle cookbooks, Pudders?”

“Doesn’t Miss like my cooking?” squeaked the elf.

“Oh, Mother and I love your cooking, you know that,” said Sophie reassuringly. “It’s just that Mr. Rockrimmon, the gentleman who was here last night, fancies Muggle cooking, so I thought I might try it. Have you ever heard of ‘scratch?’”

“No, Miss,” said Pudders, her eyes growing wider at the strange requests. “But we do have Muggle cookbooks.” With her own magic, she summoned a small stack of them. 

“Oh, thank you!” cried Sophie. She chose a book called _Classic French Cuisine_ , sat down at the table, and flipped through the pages until she found a recipe for bread.

“They served cut bread in baskets at the restaurant last night,” she told Pudders. With this information, the house elf summoned flour, eggs, and a large, gleaming bowl to the counter.

“No, no, put those back, Pudders! No magic allowed!” Sophie exclaimed, but when Pudders’ shoulders sagged as though she had just been reprimanded, Sophie quickly added, “You can put them _away_ with magic.”

Much relieved, Pudders smiled, but just as soon she had everything back in its place, Sophie jumped from her seat and began to place everything on the counter again, including the cookbook. She gathered all the other ingredients, too, and read, “Sift flour. . . Well, that’s easy enough. I’ve sifted powders for potions.” And though it took her much longer than she expected, she followed directions, and hour later, she had a bowl full of dough. 

“Let rise for two hours and punch down,” read Sophie. “Punch down? That must be a mistake.”

“Merlin’s beard, Sophie!” cried her mother, entering the kitchen, “You’re not cooking, are you?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Sophie.

Mrs. Starkle sighed and sat down at the table while Pudders served her breakfast. “Come join me,” she said to her daughter. Sophie sat down.

“Dearest, you’re making a big mistake.”

“You told me so last night,” said Sophie, shoveling cereal into her mouth so she could get back to work. “No need to repeat it.” 

“Last night I gave you a warning because of his profession. I have no objections to him personally. As a matter of fact, I quite like him.”

“You do?”

“Yes. He’s from a fine family, and I remember him from that summer at Lorelei’s. I couldn’t help but notice him; you never stopped talking about him. I was actually impressed by your taste, though of course, you were very young.”

Sophie got up from her chair and embraced her mother. “I could never be completely happy without your approval, but oh! Here I am getting ahead of myself again. He hasn’t asked me for anything more than a second date yet. I hope I can impress him with my cooking. He says Muggle cooking has a magic all its own. I was hoping to tap into it.” 

“There’s your mistake, Sophie. He already likes you. You don’t have to work so hard to impress him. And you have never cooked a thing in your life.”

“It can’t be much different than brewing potions. Gather the ingredients and follow instructions.”

“You may well be right that cooking is like brewing potions. Potions take a certain intuition born of experience. You have none. But you are a grown woman and I will not argue with you.”

Glad for that, Sophie ate a few more spoonfuls of cereal and flipped through the recipe book again. “The French are known for their onion soup, so I think I’ll try that next.”

Pudders, who never entered her mistresses’ conversations except in emergencies, bounced up and down and cried, “Miss, you cannot chop onions without magic. It’s dangerous!”

“Don’t be silly, Pudders. What’s dangerous about onions?”

“Let her do as she wishes, Pudders. Just wash up the breakfast dishes and then tidy up the rest of the house. Good luck to you, Sophie.” 

Pleased to be left to her own devices, Sophie started right off on the onions, and then she discovered what Pudders had meant. Her eyes stung and tears coursed down her cheeks, liberally flavoring the onions. 

“I can do it for you, Miss,” offered Pudders, bringing out more onions. Sophie waved her away.

“No, Pudders, I’m doing this myself,” she insisted. She began to toss the tear-soaked onions into the bin, but then thought the better of it. Tears shed for unrequited love were the key ingredient in the most powerful love potions. Onion-induced tears might not be quite the same, but they were shed for Rowan, though indirectly. If her tears had just given her onions magical power, it was one spell she could not pass up.

In time, Sophie had the soup simmering on the stovetop, and she sent her owl with an invitation to Rowan for that night. She hoped she wasn’t being too forward or that he wouldn’t get tired of seeing her so frequently.

She turned back to _Classic French Cuisine_ to find a good main course. Fish looked the simplest, and it didn’t require onions, but she would have to go out to buy the fish. She didn’t feel justified in using Pudders even for that, so she headed out to the store alone.

“Of course the store uses house elves, too,” Sophie thought ruefully, “and the fish itself is Mer-caught. It’s not quite authentic Muggle food. But at least it’s real fish, and not conjured.”

She was brief at the store, and with her package of fish carefully wrapped, she hoped to hurry home and get back to work, but on the way, she met up with some of her mother’s neighbors.

“Why, I declare, Sophie Starkle! How grown up you look!” cried Mrs. Ofenius. “You were abroad for a very long time.”

“Yes, seven years, ma’am,” said Sophie, ever respectful of her elders.

“Do I hear correctly that you are teaching Runes at Hogwarts?” asked Mrs. Prince.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sophie, hoping to keep the conversation short.

“Hogwarts? Then you must know my great niece, Olive.”

“Olive Hornby?” asked Sophie, realizing with a sinking feeling that this conversation would be anything but short. 

“That’s my girl! She’s a darling, isn’t she?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sophie, grateful she hadn’t had to give an accounting of how Olive had fared on her last few Runes exams.

Mrs. Prince sniffed. “And do you know my granddaughter Eileen?”

“I’ve heard her name, ma’am,” said Sophie. “She’s made quite a reputation for herself at Gobstones.”

“Gobstones, schmobstones,” said Mrs. Prince. “She’s a brilliant child with far greater abilities than that.”

“I’m sure, ma’am,” said Sophie. “Have a good –” 

“But nobody beats Olive for charm; am I right, Sophie?”

“Yes,” agreed Sophie, now anxious to get away before these two started a boasting match. 

“She created her own club, you know, a beauty club, so that the girls could exchange tips. And because she’s so big-hearted, she accepts in younger, plainer girls who can benefit from her advice.” Looking pointedly at her friend, Mrs. Ofenius added, “Has Eileen joined?”

Sophie gasped at the implication, but Mrs. Prince was unfazed and replied, “Eileen can’t be bothered with something so trivial. Gobstones is her hobby, but she studies quite hard. She’s got all O’s in Potions.” 

“Very impressive,” said Sophie, earning herself a glare from Mrs. Ofenius.

“But Eileen hasn’t signed up for Runes like Olive, and everyone knows it takes real brains to decipher Runes.”

“Hogwarts offers many challenging courses,” said Sophie diplomatically, although from sound of it, she thought she’d prefer the apparently clever Eileen Prince as a student over vapid Olive Hornby.

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Prince. “And what did you do with yourself while abroad?” 

Sophie sighed and told them briefly as she could about the places she’d seen and the languages she’d studied in seven years. Mrs. Ofenius’ eyes seemed to glaze over, but Mrs. Prince listened attentively, satisfying herself that she and her granddaughter were cleverer than her companion.

“My, look at the time!” said Sophie. “I really must get home. It was a pleasure seeing both of you.” 

She took her leave of them, but when she finally arrived home, she was shocked at the state of her dough. It looked like it had been treated to a double engorgement charm. It was spilling over its bowl and spreading itself all over the counter-top. 

Sophie nearly whipped out her wand and called for Pudders, but she caught herself. She rolled up her sleeves and began stuffing the dough back into its bowl with her bare hands. 

“Oh, where did I leave that recipe book?” she said aloud, pacing all over the kitchen until she found it. With dough-covered hands, she found the bread recipe, and proceeded to roll the loaves in accordance with the instructions.

As soon as she had them in the oven, her owl returned with Rowan’s response. It was short and to the point, but Sophie could not help re-reading it several times. She knew she was being foolish. After all, he didn’t write it in Runes; he had no hidden messages to convey. But still she searched for hints of love until she noticed the smoke filling the kitchen. The soup had boiled out and the pot was smoldering. 

“Ohhhhh! Scourgify!” she cried. 

The pot floated over to the bin, poured out its contents, and then in the next instant, it was magically covered in suds, which quickly disappeared, leaving the pot shiny clean. Sophie could have kicked herself for relying on magic again, but chalked it up to momentary weakness. She took out some more onions and began to chop all over again, though being in a bit of a temper, she thought it best to be more careful about where her tears fell. Angry tears, she was afraid, would spoil the soup.

When she got more soup simmering again, she went to work on the fish, and when she felt she had it all under control, she went to her bedroom and asked Pudders for help her dress for her date. That took longer than expected because there was an upset downstairs. The doorbell, in an apparent effort to ward off an intruder, began screeching like a banshee. Sophie, her mother, and Pudders all rushed to the window to see, but the intruder seemed to have disapparated. 

By the time Sophie returned to the kitchen, everything was half-burnt and barely edible. There were only two courses of action. One would be to throw the whole thing out and have Pudders conjure up a decent meal, and the other was to hope that ‘scratch’ would still work its magic. She opted for the latter. She set a table for two, complete with white tablecloth and a hand-lit candle. 

Rowan showed up promptly and with flowers. They were a nice touch, and brightened up their dinner table. But the food was a fiasco. Rowan was kind enough to eat a few bites, but Sophie could not put him through it.

“Pudders!” she called, and commanded the house elf to make dinner. It took her mere moments and Rowan declared it delicious.

For Sophie, it was a humiliating defeat. She felt like crying, and perhaps might have produced her most potent tears of the day, but she would not be so childish. She would just have to buck up and prove herself some other way.

“How about that game of Rack ‘n Rune?” she suggested. 

“Sounds good,” said Rowan.

“Accio Rack ‘n Rune! Accio quill!” Sophie called out with determination. She stood up and caught the quill mid-air. The game landed on the table. “What alphabet shall we use?” she asked. “Celtic, Teutonic, or Sanskrit?” She hoped that would impress him. She was reasonably certain he wouldn’t know Sanskrit.

“Celtic.”

She tapped the game with her quill and off it went. She played commandingly, decoding words seldom seen by anyone but Runes experts like herself, and she won easily.

“Another game?” she asked. “Teutonic this time?”

“Celtic is fine.”

They played again. She won again. But somehow the conversation was not flowing as freely as it had when they were skating. Sophie didn’t understand it. Oughtn’t two intellectuals connect this way, as a meeting of two minds? Perhaps it was the mess she’d made of dinner. She tried telling herself that if food mattered so much to him, she didn’t need him in her life, but she couldn’t quite believe it.

“Look at the time!” he said at shortly after ten. “I really must go; I have to work in the morning. Thank you for dinner and the game”

“You’re . . .very . . .welcome,” Sophie replied, struggling hard to hide her disappointment. 

“Would you like to meet on New Year’s Eve?”

“Oh, yes, please!” cried Sophie, sounding far too eager to her own ears. Modulating her voice to sound calmer and more mature, she added, “What did you have in mind?”

“I thought we might venture into Muggle London again. They have an old custom of listening to the chimes of Big Ben at midnight.”

“Sounds lovely,” said Sophie, who would have considered a dungeon lovely, as long as Rowan was there.

“Very good. Shall we meet at the Leaky Cauldron at nine, then?”

Sophie agreed, and when he left, she actually danced for joy. But after a few minutes and some strange looks from Pudders, doubt took hold of her. He would not be coming to collect her at home next time, and she had so loved his gallantry in escorting her. Now she would just apparate and meet him at the Leaky Cauldron, like any pair of wizard friends. Perhaps he still enjoyed her company, but evidently, his feelings were cooling.


	6. Chapter 6

For the next three days, Sophie tried to keep herself busy by planning lessons, but her mind and heart were with Rowan. Sometimes, she relived the happy moments – their conversation at the party, the feel of holding him while skating – but she also thought of their disastrous date at her house. The more she thought about it, the worse it seemed, and she worried that though he had asked her out again, she was on the verge of losing him.

She took extra care in getting ready for their next date, and had Pudders dress up her best robe with decoration that would fit the festive holiday. She even considered using love potion as a perfume, a trick she’d heard about in her school days, but she decided that even if it would work, it would be artificial love. She wanted the real thing: Rowan’s willing and untainted heart.

The Leaky Cauldron was brimming with people when she apparated there, and though she scanned the crowd for several minutes, she did not spot Rowan.

“Perhaps he changed his mind,” she thought in despair, but in the next instant she spotted him at a corner table. For a moment, she was elated, but then she saw he was not alone. As she walked toward his table, she could see that his companion was female. And as she got even closer, she recognized that it was Minerva McGonagall.

The two of them had drinks that were already half emptied, and they sat together in rapt conversation. Sophie stood motionless and watched. Minerva was a little closer to Rowan’s age. Perhaps those few years made a difference to him. She was debating whether or not she should disapparate and leave them to each other when Rowan noticed her and waved her over.

“Sophie! Come sit down. You know Minerva McGonagall, don’t you?”

“Of course we know each other, but it’s been a while,” answered Minerva. “I missed speaking to you at Professor Slughorn’s party. How do you like teaching at Hogwarts?”

“Umm . . . very much,” Sophie said vaguely, not sure what to make of the happy, casual tone each of them had taken. Perhaps Rowan didn’t think they were serious enough that he should hide anything from her.

“Minerva’s going to Trafalgar Square also,” he told her.

“More business than pleasure for me, though. I’ll be on duty.”

“On duty?” asked Sophie weakly.

“Thousands of Muggles attend the celebration tonight,” explained Rowan.

“And there are wizards who will attend, too, bent on harming them,” Minerva finished.

“Such admirable work you do,” said Sophie in spite of herself.

“Funny you should say that,” said Rowan.

“I was just telling Rowan how little the Ministry suits me. I think I’d prefer to teach, like you do.”

“She wants my job, too?” thought Sophie.

“It’s unfortunate that the Auror department is so politicized,” said Rowan, “but that’s all throughout the Ministry, really. My department is an exception, because we must necessarily be objective, as should the Wizengamot. If not for Dumbledore, though, I fear the Wizengamot would be as politicized as everything else.” He paused to sip his drink. “It would be a great loss to the Ministry if you left, Minerva.”

“You are kind, Rowan. And in fact, I cannot leave. At the moment, I have no other prospects.”

“Would you like a drink, Sophie, or should we get going?” asked Rowan.

“Let’s get going.”

All three stood up. “I should have known,” thought Sophie bitterly.

The three of them left the pub and walked along Diagon Alley. Rowan and Minerva were still yammering on about Ministry politics, but Sophie remained silent. She knew there were press wizards who would have paid a fortune in bribes to hear this much Ministry dirt, but she could think only of her last date with Rowan. No wonder it had come to this. She was the tag-along on a group friendship date.

“Here we are,” said Minerva when they reached the wall bordering Muggle London. “Good night.”

“Oh,” said Sophie, with relief, “so you’re not coming with us?”

“I can’t very well transform out there,” said Minerva. Sophie felt a tinge of regret. She hadn’t meant to get Minerva’s dander up that way.

Minerva stepped back, tapped her wand to herself, and a great puff of smoke filled the air, causing Rowan and Sophie to cough. Minerva was completely concealed. When the smoke cleared, a cat with markings around its eyes stared up at Rowan and Sophie.

“Brava!” cried Rowan. “That was the first animagus transformation I’ve ever seen. How about you, Sophie?”

“Yes, mine, too,” she said meekly. They might be losing Minerva’s company, but she was certainly leaving with a bang. Sophie’s Runes expertise paled in comparison.

Rowan waved his own wand over the brick wall, opening a magical doorway for them. “Well, good luck to you, Minerva,” he said. “I hope it’s a peaceful night!”

The cat blinked and scampered away.

“After you,” he said, turning to Sophie.

She savored that brief moment of chivalry until noticing that Minerva had gone first. They walked on together in silence.

“Nice clear night,” Rowan remarked. “Have you warmed up your robes?”

“Yes,” sighed Sophie. If she hadn’t done it, she’d now be enjoying the warmth of his spell, much sweeter than what she cast for herself, but then, perhaps he preferred a stronger, more self-sufficient witch, a witch more like Minerva McGonagall.

“So when do you return to Hogwarts?” Rowan asked.

“In two days,” Sophie answered, wondering if he was looking forward to her leaving.

“Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed your short visit to London.”

“Yes. It was lovely being with home with Mother again.”

For several minutes, they walked together in silence. Finally, Rowan spoke up.

“Is something bothering you, Sophie?”

“Why would you think that?”

“You’re not usually this quiet.”

“Me? What do I know about Ministry politics?”

“Count yourself lucky that you don’t.”

“Yes, I forgot. Minerva wishes she was teaching at Hogwarts, too.”

“Sophie, what’s gotten into you?”

She turned on him. “To me? What’s gotten into you? One day you’re turning on the charm, the next you’re chatting up someone else. Why did you invite me out tonight, if you’re so keen to see other witches?”

“Other witches? You don’t mean . . . Oh, Sophie, don’t tell me you’re jealous of Minerva McGonagall!”

Sophie looked up at him and her eyes filled with tears.

“Look, there’s a park,” he said, pointing. “We need to sit down and talk.”

Once they’d settled themselves in, Sophie wiped a few tears from her face and said, “The Muggles are looking at us again. Who sits in a park on a cold night like this?”

“Couples in love, that’s who,” said Rowan as a Muggle man and woman passed them by, hand in hand and oblivious to the world. Sophie stared at him.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t realized. Can I spell it out more plainly? Why do you think I went to Slughorn’s party? I’ve never gone once in all the years he’s invited me, but when I heard you were at Hogwarts . . . I remember what you were like, way back then at Lorelei’s, intelligent, deep,” he brought his hand up to her cheek and wiped away another tear, “passionate. I couldn’t pass you by. I simply had to wait until you grew up.”

“You make me feel as though I haven’t,” said Sophie, half-laughing through her tears.

“Don’t worry. A little jealousy I can overlook. It’s flattering, actually. But I want to assure you, you have every reason to trust me. I’ll prove it if I have to. We can go back, find a wizard to Bond; I’ll take the Unbreakable Vow.”

Sophie gasped. “I wouldn’t dare ask that! It would put your life at risk.”

“There’s no risk. I love you. There’s nobody else.”

Sophie’s heart was pounding. Could he really mean it? It was all too good to be true. She studied his face with a steady gaze. His eyes met hers; he did not shy away. Her own image came to the fore, each representing a different memory. They were sitting together on the dock at Lorelei’s, talking about the beyond; they were at Slughorn’s party and he was teasing her about the mistletoe; she was serving him that awful food, and he appreciated all her effort.

“Oh, Rowan!” she cried. “I misjudged you so harshly!”

“Hush,” he said, caressing her hair now. “I told you I was flattered. All that insecurity over my affections, and you see, you had them all along. Did you really think I’d care that you can’t cook like a Muggle? I love you.”

“Oh, Rowan!” she said, with happy tears filling her eyes this time. And at that moment, the full meaning of his offer to take the Unbreakable Vow dawned on her. Trembling, she said, “But in essence, you’ve just said you would . . .”

“Yes, I would. Would you?”

Sophie was so overcome she could not speak, and Rowan, who misunderstood her silence, immediately began to apologize. “I’m sorry. That was much too soon. I don’t want to rush you. You need time to get to know me.”

“No!” cried Sophie. “I mean yes! Yes, I’ll marry you!”

She threw her arms around him. And then, like the Muggle couple sitting a few yards away, they fell into a long, passionate kiss.

They didn’t make it to Trafalgar Square that night, but they celebrated quite happily on their own.


	7. Chapter 7

Slughorn was particularly self-satisfied at the first post-holiday meeting of the Slug Club. 

“Boys, I’ve done it again!” he announced. 

“A new Ministry appointment?” asked Tom.

“Good guess, but no.”

“You had a big one riding on the Wasps’ match against the Cannons?” asked Avery.

“Gambling’s a foolish habit, m’boy, but what an upset! If I hadn’t seen it from the front row myself, I would have said the match was thrown! Spectacular new stadium by the way. It felt like a spring day in there. You’ve been, haven’t you, Smith?”

“Yes, sir. I saw the match, too,” said Smith.

“Of course,” thought Tom. Only the rich boys could afford tickets to the new stadium. 

A long discussion of Quidditch followed. Tom did his best to appear interested, but as soon as he sensed that Slughorn’s enthusiasm was dwindling, he said, “But what about your news, sir?”

“Oh, yes . . .” said Slughorn casually, though Tom knew perfectly well that he was bursting with it, a sure sign that it would turn out to be a ghastly bore. 

“How many of you are taking Runes?” he asked. Tom and his followers all raised their hands. “Well, you won’t have your Runes professor for much longer. She’ll be married at the end of the school year!”

“Congratulations,” said Tom. The others echoed him. 

“It was my doing, you know,” said Slughorn, and he launched into the entire boring story of the arrangements for his Yule party. 

Tom considered this bit of news. It left him only six months to get hold of the quill. His efforts in London had been completely fruitless. He should have known the Heiress of Ravenclaw would live in a mansion. He rubbed his arm where the stone bird had scratched him.

Now that his time was limited, he’d have to move quickly. He decided to make another attempt that night. He would go to her office with a new list of words. 

She was using the quill when he got there. 

“Tom, what a pleasant surprise! I hope you had a nice holiday.”

“I suppose it was as nice as it could be,” said Tom. “I spent it in the Muggle orphanage where I was raised.”

Starkle fidgeted awkwardly, the very reaction Tom had hoped for. A pitying look soon followed, and Tom knew he had her where he wanted her.

“Congratulations on your engagement,” he said airily, to show her what a trooper he was. “Professor Slughorn told us.” 

“Thank you,” she said, hesitantly. He could tell she was feeling awkward about flaunting her good fortune before him. “I owe so much to Professor Slughorn. It’s a privilege to have him for a friend. Stick with him, Tom. You never know what good he’ll send your way in future.”

“I intend to,” said Tom. 

“Of course you do. And is there anything I can help you with?” 

Tom pulled out his word list and slid it across her desk. As he did it, he made sure his fingertips grazed the golden nib of the quill.

“You’ve been doing a lot of reading this holiday, I see,” she said, looking over his list.

“Where I live, there’s not much else for me to do.”

She nodded somberly, touched her wand to the quill, and let it go to work. He knew he could not stare at the quill or show the slightest interest in it. It would raise too many suspicions. Luckily, she was paying more attention to his list. 

“You are researching your parentage,” she said in a tone of discovery. But as soon as she had let the words slip, she flushed pink with embarrassment, judging herself for being tactless and unfeeling. 

“I’ve been searching since my first year,” said Tom. “Professor Slughorn loaned me a few books on the history of old Slytherin families, and that led me to the Runes.”

“Have you gotten results?” she asked timidly.

“Nothing useful,” he lied. 

The pitying looks were growing stronger.

“I wish I could help you . . . I know! I’ll lend you _Advanced Runes Translation_. It’s well above the level of your class, but I daresay you’re up to it.”

“Thank you very much,” said Tom, and when she turned away to reach for the book, he slipped the quill into his pocket.

She heaved the massive book onto her desk, opened it to a detailed Table of Contents, found the relevant section, and pointed it out to Tom.

“Most records of English wizarding families are in Celtic, but you may find some Teutonic codes mixed in. And if you need further help, please don’t hesitate to ask.” 

“Thank you very much,” Tom said.

Then, in a weak attempt to lighten the mood, she said, “Do you know, I think I saw you in Muggle London this holiday? It was on a street called Valhalla.”

Tom shrugged, though his heart skipped a beat. She had spotted him after all.

“Vauxhall Road, you mean? It’s possible. Muggle London gets very crowded, even in winter.”

Filthy Muggles, how he longed to be away from them once and for all.

“Sophie!” came the voice of Professor Merrythought. “I’ve just heard the wonderful news!” Starkle stood up for her elder as usual, so Tom did, too. 

“Pardon me, Tom,” said Merrythought. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Not at all. I was just leaving. Thank you for the book, Professor.” And with that, he left the two of them to gush over Starkle’s engagement. 

“That ought to keep her distracted a while,” he thought.

He raced upstairs to Room of Requirement. This time he had a new plan for the quill, something different than translation. Tom never let any opportunity come to nothing. When Starkle had seen him on Vauxhall Road, he ducked into a shop and picked himself up a little prize. It was an ordinary Muggle diary, but he hoped to fill it with a record of his opening of the Chamber of Secrets.

He chuckled to himself at the workings of his own mind. One day, while cursing that sewer of an orphanage, the idea struck him. Hogwarts had no plumbing in Slytherin’s times, but now that there was piping, Tom might just find easy entrance. Of course, once he opened the chamber, it might be dangerous to take credit, so he would create a record for posterity that would eventually reveal the truth. It was just as Slytherin’s poem said: “ _Ephemeral justice, elusive truth take time to be uncovered_.” He had the book to enchant, and he knew which tool to use to enchant it. 

He pulled the quill and the diary out of his pocket and sat as his desk. He began writing a few words. _This is the true account of the achievements of the Heir of Slytherin._

The words appeared on the page, plain as any other writing, and in his own hand. “Disparecium!” said Tom, waiting anxiously to see what would happen.

In the next moment, his writing faded without a trace. It worked! Invisible writing without invisible ink! Tom could have whooped for joy. But then the quill began to write of its own accord. Tom watched in fascination as it wrote out Slytherin’s poem in its entirety, and those words also disappeared. 

“Not only does it think for itself, it reads minds,” he thought, his resolve to keep it strengthening a hundredfold. But as soon as he’d had the thought, the quill disappeared from his hand.

“D-nit!” he yelled. He punched the desk. What had happened? He’d been sure that when he’d lost the quill previously it was because he hadn’t been concentrating on it. This time, he hadn’t taken his eyes off it. 

“The honor code is real!” he concluded. Perhaps that was why it failed to tell him anything about horcruxes. Perhaps the quill considered horcruxes beneath its honor. 

Then Tom had a pleasing thought. The honor code was not foolproof. If it were, he would never have been able to take the quill in the first place, yet he had done so twice already. This was a barrier he would get past sooner or later. He had defied anti-cheating hexes in every class but Transfiguration. This was probably something similar. And he had other work to do anyway. Now that he had chosen the tools to create his historical record, it was time to begin making history. 

He banished the diary and Runes book to the shelf where Slytherin’s scrolls were hidden and hurried down to the ground floor where he found an empty bathroom. Once inside, he broke a hole into one wall. In the language that came so naturally, he hissed through the hole, “Your master summons you!”

He waited in expectant silence. A slow, lethargic hissing echoed back. The creature was awakening from centuries of long slumber.

“Wake up! Wake up! And tell me what you are!” Tom called.

A louder, clearer hissing resounded through the pipes. Tom understood it perfectly. “I am a basilisk, the king of the serpents, ready to serve you, my lord.”

The words “my lord” rang like music in his ears. The monster knew him! It even knew his real name! It was exactly as Slytherin had promised. The monster was his to command.

Tom smiled as he remembered the terror in the eyes of Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop. He had sent those snakes to coil around their legs as a simple test of his powers and gained himself two slaves because of it. This was far, far greater. With a weapon like this under his power, he might rule the entire magical world!

Tom could not help himself. He began to laugh out loud. Whom need he fear with a basilisk in his service? His voice echoed all around the empty bathroom and down the chutes to where the monster awaited him. Another hiss echoed up through the pipes, the reassuring noise that the monster was equally glad to be awakened. But after a while, Tom heard footsteps outside, long strides in a man’s boots. It had to be Dumbledore.

“Reparo!” Tom whispered fiercely. The hole in the wall fixed itself. That was one large piece of evidence concealed. Now he had to hide himself, but he was momentarily frozen, unsure of what to do. His dreams of his future had taken him far from the present. Then he remembered he was standing in a bathroom. He could find privacy easily and look natural doing it. He dashed into a toilet stall, and stood there not moving a muscle, listening to Dumbledore’s determined steps enter the bathroom as he paced it up and down, turned, and left. Tom did not dare leave the stall until he was sure that those footsteps had gone far, far away.


	8. Chapter 8

Tom spent the next few weeks testing out what he could do with the basilisk. First he had it carry him down to its chamber where he had a look around. The cellar leading to it was cold, damp and littered with remnants of the basilisk’s shedded skin, but the Chamber itself was exquisite, a sort of serpentine temple. Stone-carved, bejeweled snakes came to life when they saw him. They were far more lifelike than that stone guard bird at Starkle’s home in London. But most magnificent of all was a gigantic stone likeness of Slytherin himself. Tom would have recognized him anywhere; his portrait hung in Slytherin House. The statue was the basilisk’s own dwelling place.

Tom knew that his first use of the basilisk would be to rid Hogwarts of mudbloods. All of Slytherin’s writings pointed in that direction. Since he had built the Chamber to defend the castle against enemies, then surely he must fight the enemies within. But because the monster’s gaze would kill indiscriminately, Tom knew he had to employ guards to round up the targets and keep away the purebloods. For this, he called a meeting in his room. He removed several of Slytherin’s writings out of their hiding place in the Room of Requirement to furnish whatever proof might be necessary.

All the Slytherin boys who usually followed him attended. There were Lestrange and Avery, of course, who shared his room. Abraxus Malfoy came with his crowd of older boys, playing up his own role as “second in command.” And there was a whole host of younger boys, most of them with more brawn than brains, always a useful sort.

“It is time for me to reveal my true identity to you all,” Tom began importantly. “Alohamora!” With a second, wordless spell, he undid his own additional locking charms and his trunk sprung open.

“Accio heritage!” he called. The scrolls floated gently to his hands. He spread them out for the others to read, but continued speaking. “These are the writings of Salazar Slytherin, founder of our house, and champion of the pureblooded wizard. Slytherin fought to rid Hogwarts of mudbloods, but in the end was forced to compromise with the other founders. But he had the foresight to create a remedy, a means of correction to be employed by his descendant.”

“Accio lineage!” Tom cried again, bringing the thick _Genealogy of the Hogwarts Four_ to the table. “Lumos!” he said, mainly for dramatic effect. Tom pointed the lit wand to his name at the bottom of the family tree, then magically turned the pages back to the name Salazar Slytherin.

“You all do know my full name, don’t you? Tom for my father, Marvolo for my grandfather.” 

With a flick of his wand, the name “Tom Marvolo Riddle” appeared and hovered in the air. It was a spell well beyond the ability of anyone else in the room. With only a slight wave of his wand, he made the letters rearrange themselves so that they spelled, “I am Lord Voldemort” just as they had on the Rack ‘n Rune tiles. 

The room was hushed in awe. “Idiots, all of them,” thought Tom. “They are more impressed at flashy tricks than history. But that, of course, is why they’re so malleable.”

Tom continued his speech. “Beneath Hogwarts Castle lives a deadly monster which answers only to me, the Heir of Slytherin. If any of you requires proof, I can allow you to hear the monster right now. Hear, but not see. To look at it would kill any of you.”

Nobody asked for proof.

“My ancestor gave me a mission, and as members of his house, it behooves each of you to participate. In the next few months, I will set the monster after the mudbloods. Your job,” he let his eyes pass over each of them slowly, “is to get them alone. I do not want to strike any purebloods, and I certainly do not want the deed known, at least not now.” He pulled the diary from his pocket. “This will record our accomplishments, to be made known whenever I say.”

“Whatever you wish, Lord Volde-,” said Malfoy.

“Do not say my name!” interrupted Tom, inventing on the spot. A name that could not be said seemed rather like a monster that could not be seen. “The monster addresses me as ‘my lord.’ That will suit. And as all of you must realize, whatever we accomplish here is only the beginning. We will avenge Slytherin at Hogwarts and then throughout the entire wizarding world! Of course I will reward the most loyal to our cause. Who is ready?”

“I am!” shouted a bunch of voices.

Then, when that first wave of enthusiasm subsided, Malfoy asked silkily, “Is there anything else you need, my lord?”

Tom smiled, savoring the thought of Malfoy’s gold. “As a matter of fact, there is. The Hogwarts library is inadequate for my needs. I require older, rarer books for the spells I want to master. Borgin & Burke might carry what I’m looking for.”

“I’ll spare no expense, my lord,” said Malfoy.

“We will do whatever you say, my lord,” said Lestrange.

Then Malfoy did something even Tom didn’t expect. He stood up from his chair, dropped to his knees, and bowed to him, saying, “My lord.”

The others all copied him and Tom thrilled in the power.

His guards took to their task eagerly but ineffectually. Isolating mudbloods proved a tricky business. The students seemed to travel in groups, _mixed_ groups at that. Meanwhile, his guards entertained themselves in other ways, bullying Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws and fist fighting with Gryffindors. There was a spate of Slytherin detentions as a result. Malfoy got it just for using of the word “mudblood.” 

Tom evaded all this trouble, however, which was the way he liked things. He used his time to peruse the steady stream of books Malfoy was supplying. Whatever it took, he had to find the secret to creating a Horcrux.

He did not neglect his other resources, either. After weeks of careful planning and flattery, he finally got Slughorn talking. The thing was simpler than Tom had thought. All he would have to do was to commit a murder. Slughorn grew squeamish at the mere mention of it, begging Tom to assure him that his interest in Horcruxes was simply academic. And it didn’t matter how much or how little Slughorn allowed himself to believe the lie. He wouldn’t dare admit the contents of their conversation for as long as he lived, even if he too somehow became immortal.

The one missing piece after Tom’s conversation with Slughorn was the incantation itself. Tom finally found it in one of Malfoy’s purchases, a rare tome by the dark wizard Grindelwald. The book was considered so dangerous the Ministry had destroyed almost every existing copy in the last war, but somehow, Borgin & Burke had hung onto one. It must have cost Malfoy a pretty penny. Grindelwald, with absolute subtlety, simply hinted to the Horcrux, and in a tiny footnote written in Teutonic Runes, Tom discovered the incantation. 

In the final days of school when the weather was warm and the castle was almost empty, Tom was able to allow the monster to strike. But contrary to his plan, it was not his guards who helped him complete the task, but a girl, Olive Hornby.

“Hi, Tom,” she said, sidling up to him the way girls often did. “Want to take me for a walk by the lake?”

“Too many mudbloods,” said Tom, shortly.

“You’re so right. The castle’s a much better place to be _alone_.” Batting her eyelashes, she leaned toward him expectantly. 

If she actually believed he would kiss her, she was even stupider than he’d realized. He jumped back in disgust, causing her to swerve, lose her balance, and fall awkwardly to the floor. She looked up at him pathetically as a high-pitched twitter came from behind them. Tom turned around to find its source, the ugliest girl he’d ever seen, laughing herself silly.

“Get out of here, you four-eyed frog face!” screamed Olive. “You’re just jealous because no boy will ever so much as _look_ at you!”

The girl ran away sobbing.

“Is she a mudblood?” Tom asked.

“Umm . . . yes,” said Olive, holding out her hand so that Tom would help her up.

“Well done, then,” said Tom, and he turned and ran after the girl.

She hid herself in girls’ bathroom, the one right next to the boys’ where he had first contacted the basilisk. No doubt they shared the same piping.

“Perfect,” thought Tom. He entered, wordlessly broke a hole in a wall, and summoned the monster. At the sound of his voice, the girl poked her head out of the stall. One look at the monster’s eyes and she was dead. 

Tom knew he had to depart the scene immediately, but he allowed himself one backward glance at her lifeless body. He had caused pain before, but never death. 

“She’s so ugly, I’ve almost done her a favor,” thought Tom as he ran up the staircase to the Room of Requirement. Alone at last, he could concentrate on creating the Horcrux. 

He performed the spell as swiftly as he would the simplest magic. The diary shook a little, but when it settled down, it appeared exactly as before. Nor did he feel any different now that his soul was split. All of Slughorn’s revulsion, all Slytherin’s warnings were for nothing. Tom laughed long and loud. He had done it! He had defied death! He was invincible - the most powerful wizard alive - and it all felt perfectly natural! 

The girl’s death caused a terrible uproar. Olive was especially panicked. She followed Tom right into the boys’ dormitory whining about it.

“She turned herself into a ghost, Tom! She told Dippet everything! He knows all about what I said to her! She says she’ll haunt me forever!” Olive covered her face and sobbed loudly.

Tom was filled with contempt. This sort of weakness was precisely why he never allowed girls into his inner circle.

“Keep your voice down!” he whispered. “Did she tell them anything else? Did she say how she died?”

“Merlin, I don’t know! She went to the bathroom and said there was a boy in there, too, and . . .” Olive stopped short and stared at him. Stupid as she was, she was piecing things together.

“Obliviate,” said Tom. 

Olive’s eyes went out of focus, but when she seemed to return to herself, he said, “Don’t worry. They’ll find the culprit soon.”

After that, Tom became desperate to find a scapegoat. Rubeus Hagrid, an overgrown third year with a known penchant for monsters, seemed his best bet. Within hours, Tom had him turned in and expelled, and won himself a service award in the bargain.

But through it all, Tom had one nagging regret. He still had not nabbed Starkle’s quill. He’d tried repeatedly throughout the year and had managed to use it to write the diary, but it would never remain with him for long. After everything he’d mastered, it didn’t make sense that this one object should elude him so many times. All the signs pointed in one direction: the only way around the quill’s honor code was to kill its owner. It would become his next Horcrux, of course. It was poetic justice: a Ravenclaw object created with the death of a Ravenclaw descendant. 

When all the students had gone home, and only teachers remained behind, Tom was ready. It was not safe to use the basilisk again, now that the “culprit” had been banished from the castle, but there were other ways. He stood outside Starkle’s office, listening to her pace up and down frantically as she packed away her things. She was also talking to herself. Every few minutes, she’d find some misplaced possession of hers and cry out, “I haven’t seen this in ages!”

“I’ll topple a bookshelf on her,” thought Tom. “She’ll be crushed to death with her own Runes texts, and everyone will think it was an accident. But first, the quill,” and as he was about to raise his wand and say, “Accio!” an unwelcome voice made him jump.

“What are you doing here in the hallway, Tom?” called Dumbledore from the opposite end of the hallway. A split second later, his tall figure was towering over Tom, so that he was sure that Dumbledore had either lifted the school’s anti-apparition charms or that his boots could somehow sidestep space and time. 

“I was . . . going to say goodbye to Professor Starkle,” Tom faltered.

“What a coincidence! So was I!”

And before Tom could say another word, Starkle had stuck her head outside her doorway and was welcoming both of them inside.

“Well, well, Sophie. Packing away and heading toward a bright new future.”

“Thank you. I am so very happy, though to tell the truth, I feel a bit guilty about it with all this tragedy around us.”

“Behind us, I hope,” said Dumbledore, gravely. “Poor Myrtle. So young, so innocent. But you, Sophie, ought not feel guilty. We must all enjoy whatever happiness life has to offer. There is too much of the opposite.”

“Yes, thank you, sir,” she said, and for a moment, they all stood in somber silence until Starkle noticed another of her stray possessions and let out another cry of, “Oh!” 

“The scoring pad from our last game of Rack ‘n Rune,” said Dumbledore. “You left it in the teachers’ lounge I believe. I hope you and Rowan will have me over to play some time. I understand that it can’t be right away . . .”

“Oh, no, Professor Dumbledore, you’re welcome to visit us at any time. You too, Tom. Whenever you’re in London, just send me an owl.”

“I will, ma’am, and thank you for all your help this year.”

“My pleasure, Tom, my pleasure.”

He watched as she laid the quill down carefully at the top of her trunk and closed it. Dumbledore swiftly waved his wand, locked the trunk, and levitated it away.

“Let me see you out, Sophie,” said Dumbledore.

“Thank you,” she said happily. Then, extending her hand to Tom, she said, “Goodbye for now. I hope to see you in London.” 

Tom took her hand and shook it. Inside, he was raging at Dumbledore, but he could conquer his anger. After all, he had a Horcrux now. Time was on _his_ side. He could afford to change his tactics as need be. Flashing Starkle his most charming smile, he said, “Till we meet again.”


	9. Chapter 9

Rowan Rockrimmon considered his wedding day to be the happiest of his life, but six years later, when he found out he would soon become a father, he was just as elated.

Sophie told him when he’d come home from work and they celebrated privately. She was tired the next morning and only stirred from her sleep when he was already dressed to leave.

“Sleep in, sleep in,” he said gently, stroking her cheek.

She yawned and pointed to a stack of books she’d promised to translate.

“You’ve always said the flexible schedule was the main advantage of freelancing. Sleep in. You need it.”

“No,” she said, stretching and getting up. “I’ll have breakfast with you, work a little, and nap later.”

Rowan was glad. For twenty minutes, they savored their happy news and Muggle-bought sweet rolls together.

“If it’s a girl,” he said, “she’ll be precociously profound, just like you were.”

“If it’s a boy, he’ll have a sterling mind and heart like yours.”

“I must say, it’s a pleasure to contemplate this side of the life of a soul when I am so often occupied with the other. Of course, it’s really all one, but the barriers of time and space cloud our perception.”

Sophie reached for his hand and kissed it. “I love it when you talk shop in the morning.”

“Please don’t look at me with those irresistible eyes or I will never get to work.”

“So?” asked Sophie, grinning.

“Really, you know I must,” he said, standing up. “Feel good and get some sleep, won’t you? The translations can wait.”

“Whatever you say, Healer Rockrimmon.” She stood up beside him and they kissed for full on the mouth. After a few minutes, he very reluctantly left for work.

It was a balmy summer day, so Rowan decided to walk rather than apparate to work. It would prolong his happy frame of mind, which would do him good at the Department. As much as the veil was a portal, it was also a barrier, and mentally traversing it was always a challenge. But love had the power to break through the barrier. Sophie had taught him that more than anyone.

He remembered when he first met her, fifteen years old and describing her perceptions of her father’s passing more clearly than any mourner he had ever interviewed. Even then she had led him to many of his later breakthroughs, and it only continued more strongly after they were married.

Sophie scarcely believed him when he told her, but when he quoted their old conversations verbatim, described in her words how she’d felt her father whispering words of comfort and advice to her, she knew it was the truth. She blushed and acted flattered, though that Rowan could never understand. With her lineage and all her accomplishments, of course she was one of the most insightful witches of the generation. He was certain she would make an excellent Unspeakable herself, but he felt better with her at home, translating textbooks in complete safety.

He turned the corner onto the next street. Even from this distance, he could hear howler headlines coming from the newsstand blocks ahead, though he could not make out the words. It had to be bad news. Howler headlines always were.

“Time to put my personal joys aside,” he thought. As he neared the kiosk, he could make out the words, “HOUSE ELF ON TRIAL! ACCUSED OF THE MURDER OF HER MISTRESS!”

Rowan shuddered. The story was horrifying enough, but it meant there might be activity in his Department, and of a very unpleasant sort. A natural death was one thing, but capital punishment was something he hoped never to witness.

He fished a few coins out of his pocket and bought a copy of The Prophet. The house elf was long in her mistress’ employ and speculation was that she caused the death accidentally.

“If so,” thought Rowan, “it’ll be life imprisonment.” His own good mood dashed, he apparated the rest of the way to work.

Predictably, the entrance to the Ministry was crowded with dozens of people, reporters and spectators mostly. Rowan watched as the Minister’s secretaries tried to push the victim’s family members to the front. Meanwhile, aggressive press wizards were questioning every staff member that passed them.

“That’s the Unspeakable Rockrimmon!” he heard one of them say. He quickened his steps and slipped in quietly through the staff entrance.

His own Department was appropriately silent, awesome even. He could hear the Wizengamot assembling themselves upstairs. He sat down and began his own meditations, but was not fully entranced when he sensed another soul in the Department with him, a soul in the “living” state, one contained within a body, though altered somehow. He turned around.

“Merlin’s beard! Tom Riddle! What in the world are you doing here? Did you come to see the trial? It’s upstairs.”

“No, I’ve come to get permission to travel to the wizarding colonies abroad,” said Tom. “As I’ve told you and your wife, I’ve been saving up to do this since I graduated Hogwarts.”

Rowan nodded. Indeed Tom had mentioned such plans many times on his visits to their house. It explained his reason for taking the job at Borgin & Burkes. A Hogwarts Head Boy could work anywhere he chose, but Tom always claimed that until he’d traveled extensively, he did not want to tie himself to a career.

If Tom was finally leaving, Rowan would not be sorry. He always sensed something very strange about Tom Riddle, not only in his aura, but in his behavior. Once, when Sophie’s favorite crystal goblet fell, broke, and fixed itself without even a “Reparo,” Tom questioned her so closely, he was downright intrusive.

“Nothing of mine ever stays broken or missing for long,” she explained. “I first noticed it in the year I taught at Hogwarts.”

That should have ended the subject, but Tom continued to hint at it in later visits, leaving Rowan to wonder what he might be after. He did not know the origins of the charm protecting Sophie’s possessions, but he was grateful for it and did not want it undone.

Sophie was more trusting. “It’s all in the pursuit of knowledge. It’s an unusual charm and he wants to understand it,” she insisted. “Besides, he’s a challenging opponent in Rack ‘n Rune.”

From then on, Rowan put up with Tom’s visits but he never left Sophie alone with him.

“You need the Department of International Magical Cooperation,” Rowan told Tom. “That’s on the opposite end of the building, fifth floor.” Suspicious, he added, “How did you get in here? Security is usually very tight.”

Tom shrugged. “A wrong turn, I suppose.”

“Allow me to see you out then.” They walked down the hallway leading out of the Department of Mysteries. The guard, Rookwood, had indeed left his post. As they climbed up the stairs, Rowan asked, “When will you be leaving?”

“As soon as I have the permit. I won’t have much time for goodbyes, I’m afraid. Please send my regards to your wife.”

“I will,” said Rowan, much preferring it that way. They stopped in front of the Fountain of Magical Brethren. The lobby was teeming with people. Every security wizard in the Ministry must have been called to deal with the chaos.

“Curious that the trial of a house elf trial should generate so much excitement,” Rowan remarked. “It’s a first, of course, since they always obey orders, but generally, people don’t care enough about them to pay attention.”

“It’s a clear-cut case, anyway,” said Tom. “The elf was old and incompetent. The whole trial is just a formality.”

“I see you share The Prophet’s opinion,” said Rowan. He offered Tom his hand, “Well, goodbye, Tom, and good luck.”

They shook hands and went in separate directions. Rowan quickly returned to his own department, but with all the distractions, it was hard for him to get entranced. Focusing inward, on himself, Sophie, and the new soul they had conceived, he was able to enter the proper state.

Time did not exist in this realm, and physical sensations were to be ignored. He tuned his mind into the whisperings beyond the veil, concentrating hard on the patterns and possible messages, and did not pay attention to the strange clinging around his leg, which inched up to his chest and then his neck. The sudden searing pain took him completely by surprise. In an instant, he, in both body and soul, was on the opposite side of the veil.

Departed souls of the people he had loved surrounded and greeted him. He saw things that even Goswick, the most venerated of Unspeakables, had never reported. It was a realm of comfort and beauty, but oh, the pain of departure!

With all of his might, he shouted across the veil, “Sophie! I’m all right! Take care of yourself and the baby!” The other souls tried coaxing him in further, but he remained at the portal’s edge, calling to his colleagues.

Goswick was first to notice him missing, the first to enter the chamber. Staring at the veil in horror, he cried, “Dear G-d, no!”

Croaker and Bode heard him and broke trance, too, running in from their own stations in the Hall of Prophecy. They too looked at the veil and then at the elder wizard’s grief-stricken eyes.

“He slipped across?” Croaker whispered.

“It appears so,” answered Goswick.

“Not Rockrimmon! Of all people, he could not have an accident like this!” cried Bode.

The three men embraced each other.

“It’s a warning to us all,” said Goswick. “It could happen to anyone, even a wizard as competent as he.” The three bowed their heads in silent tribute. At length, Goswick spoke again. “Of course, we will have to carry on an investigation.”

“The Ministry will suppress it,” said Croaker.

“How many wizards in the Ministry understand what we do here? We are independent researchers, dedicated to truth.” He looked at the veil sadly, “and I need to do this for my own peace of mind. Rookwood!” he called.

The guard ran inside, panting. “Yes, sir?”

“Please bring down Warlock Dumbledore. He’ll be upstairs at the trial.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and after several minutes, he returned with Dumbledore.

“Thank you, Rookwood,” said Goswick. You are dismissed.”

“Has the trial concluded?” Croaker asked when the guard had gone.

“Yes,” said Dumbledore heavily. “The elf has been sentenced to Azkaban, though the evidence does not add up. The family reports missing treasure, but elves aren’t wont to steal, much less kill. I have tried to press for further investigation, but nobody will listen. Everyone is perfectly content to believe it was an accident.”

The Unspeakables exchanged dark looks with each other.

“As you see,” said Goswick, “there has been an accident amongst us as well.”

Dumbledore looked at the other three wizards. “Dear G-d, not Rockrimmon!” His eyes scanned the veil.

“Go to Sophie!” cried Rowan from the opposite side. “Let her hear it from you!”

“I will attempt to communicate with him myself, of course,” said Goswick, “but following his own methods, his widow would have a far greater chance of success.”

“Rowan always said she had a unique potential,” said Bode.

“She’s an extraordinary witch,” Dumbledore agreed.

“Don’t risk her!” begged Rowan across the veil. “Especially not now!”

“But she is untrained, and it might be a terrible risk for her,” said Goswick.

“Oh, my dear friends!” said Rowan. “Thank goodness you are hearing me.”

“I see your dilemma,” said Dumbledore. “I think the choice should be hers. Different mourners have different reactions. I am an old friend of her family’s. Do you gentlemen consent that I should be the one to ask her?”

“Yes! Yes!” shouted Rowan.

“I think that is the best way to proceed,” said Goswick. “Please convey our deepest sympathies to her. We all mourn his loss.”

They looked at the veil and allowed themselves a few more private tears. Rowan lurked at the edge a little longer, but the welcome from the souls surrounding him was so inviting. He succumbed and receded, trusting in the love that would call him to Sophie whenever she needed him.


	10. Chapter 10

Dumbledore left the Department of Mysteries with his heart heavy and his mind awhirl. 

“Poor Rowan! Poor Sophie!” he thought. “They had barely begun building their life together.”

But it was not his time to mourn. For him, it was time to act. His first step was to obtain a list of all Ministry visitors’ passes granted that day. Because of the trial, hundreds of names were on it. A chill went through Dumbledore as he read, “Tom Riddle, obtaining permit for international travel.”

Dumbledore then examined the much longer list of spells cast in the Ministry that day. With so many wizards, there had been thousands of spells, everything from Alohamora to animagus transformations, but no Unforgivable Curses. 

“Of course not,” thought Dumbledore. “Nobody would risk it under the nose of the Ministry.” But if Rowan had indeed been murdered, it was impossible from that vast list to know which weapon his murderer had chosen.

Though Dumbledore had accepted the task of breaking the tragic news to Sophie, he felt his more pressing duty was to go to Azkaban and interview Hokey. The two deaths, both appearing to be accidental, might be connected, and Hokey might know something. 

Dumbledore apparated to the prison and was shown immediately to Hokey’s cell. With wizards and dementors everywhere, the poor creature was nearly terrified out of her wits, but when she saw that at least one wizard in the world cared to hear what she had to say, she calmed down and spoke. 

Her recollections were telling. Everything pointed to Tom. Dumbledore could even detect the traces of his memory modification, but he knew only too well that even his word would not help Hokey. Prejudice was standing in the way. The injustice rankled him.

Tom’s motive for killing Hepzibah Smith seemed obvious enough, but Dumbledore was less certain as to why he’d been after Rockrimmon. Had he tortured Rowan into revealing a Department secret, causing his instantaneous death? It did not seem likely. Rowan was absolutely meticulous about his Vows, and he would endure any torture and cling to life if only for Sophie’s sake.

Did it have something to do with Sophie? Dumbledore had always been concerned about Tom’s peculiar interest in her. If he had stolen the Hufflepuff cup and the Slytherin necklace, might he have been after something of Ravenclaw’s in Sophie’s possession? Acutely alarmed for her safety, he apparated immediately to the Rockrimmons’ house.

Nobody answered his knock, but the door had been left unlocked, so Dumbledore entered. The house had the distinct aura of trauma and desertion. The Rockrimmons’ possessions were in complete disarray, much worse than usual. 

“He has been here and was looking for something,” thought Dumbledore. “But where is Sophie?”

Wand at the ready, Dumbledore went invisible and checked every room in the house. Sophie was nowhere to be found.

“It cannot be. Not her. Not her,” he thought desperately. He apparated to Sophie’s childhood home.

“Oh, Albus! Thank G-d you came!” said Mrs. Starkle when her house elf showed him in.

“She’s here? How is she?”

“Inconsolable,” said her mother simply.

So she knew. Without anyone telling her, she knew.

“She found out by premonition?” Dumbledore asked.

“It seems so,” said Mrs. Starkle. “She’d been sleeping and she awoke with a terrible fright. She knew it was no nightmare, sp she fled to me. The Unspeakables confirmed it, and told us you were coming. Oh, I warned her that it was risky to marry an Unspeakable, but she loved him so! And now she is a widow at a younger age than I was, and she will raise her baby all alone!” 

Mrs. Starkle dissolved into tears.

“You mean she’s –?”

Mrs. Starkle nodded, unable to speak.

“That is bittersweet news indeed,” said Dumbledore, “but you must see the hope in it. With a child to care for, in fact, _because_ of the child, Sophie will recover from this, great a loss as it is. May I see her?”

“She’s in there,” said her mother pointing to the very room Dumbledore knew had been Sophie’s in her girlhood. He knocked on the door and heard a very quiet, almost indistinct “Come in.”

Sophie rose from her seat as soon as he entered. If ever there was a moment in which Dumbledore could have foregone this formality, this was it. He sighed and pulled up a chair opposite where she’d been sitting. When she sat down, too, he conjured up two steaming hot mugs of cocoa.

“Abysmally small comfort, I know, but you must keep up your strength.” He took a long sip so that she would copy him.

“I knew you would come.”

“I am sorry I could not come earlier.”

“You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

“Have some more cocoa,” he urged her, taking another long sip himself. When she had finished, he asked, “Do you remember if there were there any visitors to your house today?”

“No. I was resting all morning until . . . Rowan woke me.” With this she shuddered and broke down into uncontrollable sobs. Dumbledore murmured words of comfort, though he found himself shedding tears along with her. 

After a few minutes, he dried his beard and said, “Sophie, please look at me.”

She raised her head, and when her trusting eyes met his, images of Rowan came pouring forth. Rowan holding her hands as they took their wedding vows, Rowan sitting with her at nighttime by the sea, Rowan hanging onto her as she lost her balance on Muggle skates, Rowan kissing her goodbye, perhaps that very morning, neither of them realizing it would be their last kiss. Words came forward, too, words in the half-dozen languages she knew, and all of them expressing love and loss.

“If a memory charm has been used,” thought Dumbledore, “I will not be able to determine it as long as she is in mourning.” As a fresh bout of tears sprung from her eyes, he concluded, “And cruel of me to try.”

“Thank you,” said Sophie, at last breaking the eye contact. She lowered her face so that her long hair covered her, and she shook and cried silently. 

After a while, she spoke again. “I understand that Rowan’s death might not have been an accident. I suppose there might be dark wizards who wanted to suppress what he knew, but I don’t understand what any of that has to do with me.”

“Have some more cocoa,” said Dumbledore.

“What did you put in it?”

“Just a little liquid nourishment. Now drink up.”

She obeyed, and then he answered her, “Perhaps someone wished to steal something from you and thought he must get your protector out of the way.”

Sophie shook her head. “I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to steal from me.” She made a sweeping gesture around the room. Slowly and steadily, books, papers, and clothing began to apparate into the room.

“Your possessions are following you here,” he observed.

“They always do,” she said as a small black quill and her game of Rack ‘n Rune appeared between them. “I thought that was a charm I’d picked up while teaching at Hogwarts. I’ve never lost anything since then, and by nature I’m dreadfully disorganized.” 

“Ah, the little things we forget,” said Dumbledore, remembering the first lesson she taught at Hogwarts. He cast the spell to protect her from Tom’s greed even then. 

“You were embarrassed when I cast that spell, but actually, I’ve used it on myself, too.” He waved his wand over her and all her possessions and said, “Tillhiasit.” 

Everything in the room straightened itself into neat piles. Even Sophie’s hair was smoothed back from her face. “That should do for future generations, as well” he told her. “Now, the Unspeakables want to know if you are willing to go to the veil and try and reach Rowan. Personally, I recommend against it. It is evident to me that whatever Rowan wants to tell you, you will hear, and I doubt there is anything to be gained by your going to the Ministry. But please, take good care of yourself.”

“I will.”

“And if you need anything, anything at all, please write to me at Hogwarts.”

“I will.”

“And by all means, please write to me with good news when it comes.”

Much to Dumbledore’s relief, for the first time in the conversation, Sophie smiled. He stood up, and she followed, and the house elf escorted him out.

Dumbledore heard from Sophie Starkle Rockrimmon quite regularly after that, and was pleased to see her grow stronger over time. But no letter she had ever sent gave him as much pleasure as the one he received nearly a year later. It read:

_Dear Professor,_

_I am sorry it has taken me so long to write this time. I am sure that by now the news has reached you that I have had a daughter, and she really is the light of my life. I try not to dwell too much on what I have lost, though I feel it at all times. Sometimes I have the sense that Rowan is cheering me on, helping me to buck up, but never once have I gotten a single clue as to how or why he died._

_I’ve named my daughter Rowena. Whatever people may think or say, she is named her after her father._


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter jumps eleven years to the next generation.

On the morning of her eleventh birthday, Rowena refused to leave the house. Mother assured her that her letter would reach her wherever she went, but Rowena couldn’t think of doing anything else on such an important day. She perched herself beside a window and waited.  
  
Luckily, she did not have to wait long. An owl, plain as the plainest wizard’s owl, dropped the letter in her lap shortly after breakfast. Rowena held her breath and gazed at the Hogwarts seal before opening it. How could she break such an exquisite emblem? How could she not? It felt like she’d been waiting for this moment her entire childhood.  
  
“Here,” said Mother, offering Rowena her special quill. Rowena blinked up at her. She’d never been permitted to use the quill before. It was a symbolic moment, and they were both nearly overcome. Taking the quill, Rowena gently prodded its tip under the seal to tear it as little as possible. Then she unfolded the letter and read:  
  
 _Dear Miss Rockrimmon,  
  
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizadry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.  
  
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.  
  
Yours sincerely,  
Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress_  
  
“Deputy Headmistress,” her mother read over her shoulder. “Oh, the surprises life sends us! But I must be grateful for the precious years I had . . . and for you of course,” she added, stroking Rowena’s hair with fondness.  
  
“Why didn’t Dumbledore send the letter?” asked Rowena.  
  
“Professor Dumbledore,” corrected Mother. “He is the greatest, kindest wizard alive. Give him the honor he deserves. Always address him by his title, and stand up when he enters the room. Actually, you ought to do that for all your professors even if nobody else does.”  
  
“Yes, Mother.”  
  
“And I have much more to tell you about Hogwarts, but first, answer your letter.”  
  
“Oh, of course!” cried Rowena.  
  
And before she could take a step toward the desk, her mother smiled and added, “With the quill.”  
  
Rowena grinned, too, feeling very grown up. The quill would not be hers until she finished Hogwarts, but penning her first letter with it was all part of the tradition. She wrote in the most formal language she could think of, which seemed to come quite naturally once she was holding the quill:  
  
 _To the Honorable Hogwarts Faculty:  
  
Thank you for accepting me as a student. I have been waiting for this for as long as I can remember. I am looking forward to beginning my magical education.  
  
Sincerely,  
Rowena Rockrimmon_  
  
  
The letter was short, and didn’t quite capture all the eagerness inside her, but she knew the quill had guided her to just the right words.  
  
“It reads thoughts?” Rowena asked.  
  
“It can harmonize itself with your thoughts and help you express them,” explained Mother, motioning that she wanted the quill back and she wanted to see the letter. “’To the Honorable Hogwarts Faculty.’ I see you are bursting eager to meet Professor Dumbledore.”  
  
“Well, you’ve told me so much about him, and he never visits when I’m awake.”  
  
“He does that deliberately. Except under extenuating circumstances, he does not meet with students, or future students, outside of Hogwarts. And this brings me to what I wanted to tell you.”  
  
Rowena suppressed a loud sigh. She knew what was coming. Mother was going to warn her against boasting about her lineage.  
  
“Young as you are, I have never hidden the truth from you. You know very well that these are dangerous times.”  
  
Rowena nodded. This was not the speech she’d been expecting.  
  
“At Hogwarts you may likely meet children of actual Death Eaters.”  
  
“But how could Professor Dumbledore - ”  
  
“If a child has magical potential, Professor Dumbledore does not discriminate against him because of his family background. That wouldn’t be any different than refusing a student entry because he was Muggle born.”  
  
“It’s different,” said Rowena.  
  
“Somewhat different,” her mother agreed. “Death Eaters’ children can be dangerous if they follow their parents’ prejudices. But educating them away from that is the task of Professor Dumbledore and his faculty, and no doubt they do their job better than anyone can. But you must still be on your guard, especially from people who’ll try to flatter you and fill you with false ideas about the purity of blood. It is right to be proud of our foremother, but she does not make us a whit better than anybody else. Plenty of Muggle born wizards have risen to great heights and disproved all the theories of magical lineage. The best you can do is to be your own witch. Who you come from and who you will become are never as important as who you are now. Do you understand?”  
  
“Yes, Mother,” said Rowena. So it was the same old speech, but with bigger implications. Rowena vowed never to boast. She was not a snob . . . or something worse.  
  
Mother smiled sweetly. “Now how about a manual game of Rack ‘n Rune?”  
  
Mother never spoke about the matter again after that. She did, however, speak about the curriculum at Hogwarts quite often, increasing Rowena’s anticipation by the day. They made several trips to Diagon Alley for supplies. Seeing her mother’s textbooks lined up for the Runes classes filled Rowena with pride, though she would not begin Runes herself until third year.  
  
But nothing thrilled Rowena as much as getting her first wand. Though Mr. Ollivander was considered the best wand maker in England, Mother took her to a lesser known witch named Madam Tristessa who kept a small store above the Apothecary. Her wands were a bit more experimental than Mr. Ollivander’s and she took cores from a wider variety of magical creatures. Among those creatures was the pet raven of Rowena Ravenclaw, the very same raven whose feather made her mother’s quill. Rowena’s wand core was a mix of both raven and phoenix feather.  
  
“Phoenix seems very fitting for the daughter of an Unspeakable,” observed Madam Tristessa.  
  
At last, September 1 arrived. But as excited as Rowena had been, when she finally reached Kings Cross Station, she was absolutely terrified. Platform 9 ¾ was full of strangers, most of whom were greeting each other and chatting happily. She felt a tightness in her throat threatening to turn into tears if she wasn’t careful.  
  
“What if I don’t make friends?” she whispered to her mother.  
  
“Of course you will.”  
  
“Just like Mother to say something like that,” thought Rowena, unconvinced.  
  
“Look,” said her mother, drawing close. “See that round-faced girl over there? She looks like a first year, too. And even if that boy is her older brother, he won’t sit with her. He’s wearing a prefect badge, which means he’ll have a special compartment when he’s not monitoring the train. We’ll wait while she says goodbye to her parents, then after she boards the train, you follow her, and you’ll have someone to sit with.”  
  
Rowena watched as the girl hug her father first, and then her mother. She clung to each of them quite tightly.  
  
“She’s as nervous as I am,” Rowena realized.  
  
The girl was still holding her mother’s hand as her older brother ran and seemed to disappear into thin air.  
  
“Your turn, Alice,” said her father. “Ready?”  
  
Alice nodded.  
  
“Be a good girl, now.”  
  
“Yes, Mother.” Taking a deep breath, Alice ran in the same direction her brother had and she, too, vanished.  
  
“All right, Rowena,” said her mother, giving her one last kiss on the top of her hair.  
  
“The first few days are hard for everybody, but I know you’ll love Hogwarts.”  
  
Rowena squeezed her mother’s hand. She was feeling better already. She whizzed off in the same direction as Alice, and in an instant, she was standing on the inside of a sparklingly clean train brimming with teenagers.  
  
“You’re blocking,” said Alice’s brother to a group of boys. They stepped aside and let her pass. She darted into one of the compartments.  
  
“Expect major upsets this year, Smith,” said a chubby boy to Alice’s brother. “We’re second years now, and Potter’s going out for Chaser.”  
  
Smith turned around and looked the boys up and down, particularly the boy in glasses. Rowena assumed he must be Potter. Smith sniffed as though unimpressed.  
  
“Looks like he doesn’t believe you,” said another boy. “Oh well, as we all know, ‘it takes talent to recognize talent.’” He said the last bit in a sort of affected voice while holding his hands out in front of himself to indicate a very fat stomach. Rowena guessed he was imitating someone, and he must have done it well because everyone around was laughing.  
  
“Now that sounds familiar,” said a bald and overweight as he stepped out from one of the compartments.  
  
“Uh oh,” said the chubby boy.  
  
But the overweight man was not the least bit angry. Instead, he laughed, lay a hand on the shoulder of the boy who’d mocked him, and said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but your voice needs to deepen before you can do me justice, dear boy.”  
  
People began to snicker. Apparently, they enjoyed seeing this boy bested, though in fact, he took it in stride.  
  
“You’re holding up traffic, boys,” said the overweight man as more and more people gathered behind them.  
  
The boys stepped aside, and the other students began pushing themselves forward. Each one gave the man a “thank you, sir,” or “thank you, Professor,” most of which he acknowledged with a friendly nod, though a few got a hearty “welcome back.” One pretty redhead got more attention than anybody. “Ah, Lily," said the professor, "I trust you’ve had a good summer.”  
  
“Yes, thank you, sir,” said Lily.  
  
“Ready to dazzle us all again with your abundant talent and charm? Will you break poor Potter’s heart again this year?”  
  
“You bet,” said Lily nonchalantly. The professor howled with laughter as she walked away, but to Potter he said, “Don’t worry. She’ll come round.”  
  
More students filed past, each one receiving the professor’s greeting, but he seemed to deliberately ignore one blonde boy in glasses. Rowena felt bad for him. The professor had been terribly rude. She made to pass by him, too, but he stopped her.  
  
“And you must be Sophie’s daughter – you look exactly like her!” he boomed. “Surely you’ve heard of me. I’m responsible for your parents’ marriage, you know.”  
  
“Professor Slughorn?” she asked shyly.  
  
“In the flesh!” he said, patting his own abundant store of it. Elbowing Potter, he said, “Listen to this story. This is why you need me. About twenty years ago, a lovely young lady came to teach Runes at Hogwarts. Now she had a long and secret crush on an older man – a brilliant wizard, an Unspeakable.”  
  
Rowena shrunk from all the eyes staring at her.  
  
“I made sure to invite him to my Yule party, and they were engaged after only a few dates! So you see, I am quite the matchmaker. But alas, the poor chap died in a research-related accident at a very young age.”  
  
The eyes around her became more sympathetic but more curious, too. Rowena wanted to run into a nice, quiet compartment without so many people. Why did this have to be her introduction to Hogwarts?  
  
Professor Slughorn must have sensed her awkwardness because he said, “You and I will have plenty of time to chat, I’m sure. Run along now and find yourself a seat before they’re all taken.”  
  
“Thank you, sir,” said Rowena, scooting away quickly. She looked inside the compartments, most of which were full. She passed one where the blonde boy Professor Slughorn had snubbed was reading alone. He had already changed into a robe with a blue emblem. He was a Ravenclaw.  
  
“I suppose I’ll join him if Alice isn’t alone,” she thought. “It would be nice to hear newer information than Mother’s.”  
  
But a few compartments down, she did find Alice sitting alone. She took a deep breath and pulled the door open.  
  
“May I sit here?” asked Rowena.  
  
“Sure,” said Alice eagerly.  
  
“I’m Rowena Rockrimmon.”  
  
“Oh, what a beautiful name! I’m just plain old Alice Smith. Are you from a Ravenclaw family that your name is Rowena?”  
  
Evidently, Alice knew some history.  
  
“I’m named after my father, actually, but my family are Ravenclaws.” It was a neutral enough statement. No significant details revealed.  
  
“My family are all Hufflepuffs,” said Alice, “but sometimes people get into different houses than their families.”  
  
"I thought that was very unusual.”  
  
“But it happens. Sirius Black – he was one of the boys standing outside – comes from a Slytherin family, but he’s in Gryffindor.”  
  
“You already know people here?” Rowena asked in surprise.  
  
“Not really,” said Alice. “I know my brother, of course, and I’ve met some his friends. Sirius Black is from my neighborhood. He’s all right, but we’re too different to be friends.”  
  
“What neighborhood?”  
  
“I’m from London – the older wizarding section.”  
  
Rowena nodded. Her grandmother lived there, too. That meant Alice had probably grown up much like her mother had, in a big mansion with a house-elf. But Alice hadn’t said any of this, and Rowena respected her for it.  
  
Alice’s brother pulled open the compartment door and let himself in. He was momentarily surprised to see Rowena there, looked her up and down the way he had Potter, and sat down beside Alice. Rowena supposed this meant he approved.  
  
“Rowena, this is my brother Darius. Darius, this is Rowena Rockrimmon.”  
  
“Are you the one they’re saying is a daughter of an Unspeakable?” he asked.  
  
“Yes,” said Rowena hesitantly.  
  
“Hmmph. The story of how Slughorn introduced your parents has been bandied about all over the train.”  
  
Rowena frowned. This was just the sort of attention her mother told her to avoid.  
  
“Don’t worry,” said Darius. “Slughorn told everyone not to ask you any questions. What goes on at the Department of Mysteries is top secret, and anyone who doesn’t know that had better learn it.”  
  
“It’s been kept secret from me, too,” said Rowena, though it wasn’t entirely true. She did know about the portal through which her father had passed. And she also believed what her mother told her: he was far too skilled to have died in a “research related accident.” Something more had happened.  
  
“They’ll be on to something else soon enough,” said Darius. “By the time we get to Sorting, Black and Potter’ll have done something so outrageous, everyone will be talking about that. Second year and they act like they own the school. Well, they’re Longbottom’s problem, not mine.”  
  
“He’s been made prefect, too?” asked Alice.  
  
“Naturally. He’s the best bloke in Gryffindor.” Darius turned to Rowena. “So what house is your family from?”  
  
“Ravenclaw.”  
  
“Ah, well, that stands to reason. An Unspeakable would have to be a scholar. We’re Hufflepuffs. But first years always have a few classes together, and friendship among the houses is a big thing these days. You’ll see.”  
  
“Darius, what happens at the Sorting?” asked Alice.  
  
“Aww, c’mon Alice, give it up.”  
  
“But we’re so close it! Shouldn’t we be prepared?”  
  
“It’s Hogwarts tradition that nobody knows what the sorting is until they’ve gone through it. If I told you, would that be fair to the others?”  
  
“I suppose not,” said Alice dejectedly.  
  
Darius stood up. “I’m going to go back to monitor the halls. Be a good girl, Alice.”  
  
“`Be a good girl, Alice,’” she mocked as he went away. “What trouble does he think I’ll make in here?"  
  
Rowena tried to look sympathetic. “My mother wouldn’t tell me about the Sorting either. The only thing she said was that I’m as prepared as I need to be.”  
  
“I wonder what that means,” said Alice.  
  
They spent the rest of the ride exchanging stories they’d heard about Hogwarts. Alice knew all about Quidditch since her brother played Hufflepuff Seeker. Rowena shared everything she’d been told about the coursework. The time seemed to pass quickly, and before they knew it, they were at Hogwarts.  
  
The boat ride was exactly as her mother described it. She counted at least five Merpeople swimming below. And the castle was even more magnificent than she had imagined. The Great Hall was immense, and when Professor McGonagall led the first years up to the front, they were in full view of every student, teacher, and ghost in the school. It was terrifying.  
  
They stood on a sort of stage. At its center was a stool, and on top of the stool was an old wizard’s hat. Several people jumped when it began to sing.  
  
The song was all about the history of Hogwarts and the four houses, how each valued a different quality, and how they all worked together to unite as one. For many of the first years, it was the first time hearing about it. For Rowena, these were familiar bedtime stories.  
  
When the hat stopped singing, Professor McGonagall called, “Elspeth Addison!”  
  
A freckle-faced girl stepped forward.  
  
“Sit down and put the hat on,” Professor McGonagall told her.  
  
She did as she was told.  
  
“I’m glad I’m not first,” whispered a boy behind Rowena and Alice.  
  
After a few moments, the hat shouted “GRYFFINDOR!”  
  
A table of students under a red and gold banner all cheered and welcomed her.  
  
“It doesn’t look so bad,” said Alice.  
  
Rowena agreed and waited her turn. She hoped Alice would be in her house. After all, she had been the one to point out that people sometimes differed from the rest of their families.  
  
"Mitchell Bones," called Professor McGonagall.  
  
"I'm Keith Rantipole," whispered the boy who was glad he wasn’t first. "My father owns Speedster Brooms. Your brother told me he has one," he said, nodding at Alice.  
  
"Be quiet over there," scolded Professor McGonagall.  
  
"HUFFLEPUFF!" cried the Sorting Hat.  
  
"Dirk Cresswell," called Professor McGonagall.  
  
"He's a mudblood," said Keith Rantipole. "I checked everyone out on the train."  
  
Rowena and Alice looked at each other and took a few steps away from Keith Rantipole.  
  
"Blood traitors!" he whispered at them.  
  
“Shhhh!” hissed Professor McGonagall.  
  
“RAVENCLAW!” called the Sorting Hat.  
  
Rowena watched the cheering Ravenclaw students. She liked them already.  
  
Several more students were called. After Keith Rantipole was sorted into Slytherin, Professor McGonagall called, “Rowena Rockrimmon!”  
  
“Wish me luck,” she said to Alice.  
  
When the hat was placed on her head, everything disappeared from view. This was comforting in its way, as was the tiny voice whispering in her ear.  
  
“Ahh, now here’s something familiar. Raised in the family tradition, I see. A real thirst for knowledge and quite a creative streak, too. And you’ve got a fair bit of courage. Oh yes, a real little trooper. Does Gryffindor interest you? Gryffindor and Ravenclaw have always gotten on, you know. No? Knowledge always comes first, does it? All right, then, go join them at RAVENCLAW!”  
  
The last word was shouted for all the hall to hear. The students under the blue banner were cheering. Rowena joined their table, and as soon as she settled herself in, she turned to watch Alice’s sorting.  
  
“HUFFLEPUFF!” called the hat.  
  
Alice looked up as the Hufflepuffs welcomed her. Her brother cheered the loudest. Smiling, she joined the table, but on the side near Ravenclaw so she was able to lean over and whisper to Rowena, “I was almost made a Gryffindor.”  
  
“So was I.”  
  
And for the rest of her life, Rowena always felt it was the “almost Gryffindor” in each of them that made them such close friends.


	12. Chapter 12

One lazy morning at the end of her summer holiday, Rowena and her mother were having brunch over a game of Rack ‘n Rune when a Hogwarts owl flew into the house and dropped a letter onto her mother’s lap.  
  
"Hmmph,” said Mother, reading and signing it. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”  
  
“What?” asked Rowena.  
  
Her mother handed her the letter.  
  
 _Dear Sophie,  
  
I hope you and Rowena are well.  
  
Knowing as I do that Rowena’s third year, the start of her formal study of Runes, is a fulfillment of one of your most cherished dreams, it pains me to tell you that the school governors have been exerting some pressure on me. Because you are the author of the textbooks used in our classes, many have claimed that Rowena has an unfair advantage over the other students. Some have even demanded that she be barred from classes altogether. Of course I would not hear of it, but I must ask you to sign this note to show your promise that as long as Rowena studies Runes at Hogwarts, you will not tutor her in any way.  
  
Thank you and I look forward to seeing Rowena at Hogwarts.  
  
Albus Dumbledore_  
  
“That’s not fair!” cried Rowena as her mother sent the owl off with the signed letter. “Keith Rantipole’s father manufactures brooms, and he gave the best models to the Slytherin Quidditch team!”  
  
“But this is academics,” said Mother calmly.  
  
“I’ll bet there are loads of kids who get help from their parents in all kinds of subjects. Nobody’s sending _them_ any notes.”  
  
“First of all, you don’t actually know that to be true; you are just assuming, and second, the author of a textbook is something more than simple parental expertise in one area or other.”  
  
Rowena pouted, but Mother ignored it. With a wave of her wand, she cleared away the Rack ‘n Rune game.  
  
"The note didn’t say anything about Rack ‘n Rune!” whined Rowena. “And we were playing in English!”  
  
“We are going to be extra careful,” said Mother. “Professor Dumbledore should not have to suffer any added stress for our sake. Goodness knows he has more serious problems on his plate.”  
  
Rowena pouted some more. She couldn’t make a fuss against an argument like that, but it still seemed unfair.  
  
Mother walked over to her side of the table and hugged her. “Sweetie, I’m probably more disappointed than you are. I wanted to be with you every step of the way as you acquired new languages, discovered new texts. But it’s just a few years. After you graduate, there’ll be plenty of time for our late morning games of Rack ‘n Rune.”  
  
But as soon as she was back at Hogwarts, Rowena soon discovered that her problems had just begun. When the results of the first Runes exam came in, there were more cries of “Unfair!” Luckily, Professor Stockard took her side.  
  
“I have no doubt that Miss Rockrimmon earned her grade with hard work,” he said. “Without it, the exposure she has already had would not have done her any good. Also, I should point out that Mr. Cresswell also excelled on the test, which proves that a prior Runes background is not necessary for success in my class.”  
  
"It proves that she let her mudblood boyfriend copy off her test scroll,” whispered Rantipole.  
  
But the professor heard him. “Twenty points from Slytherin. I will not tolerate such language in my class. This is your last warning. If it happens again, I will give you detention.”  
  
Rantipole kept quiet after that, and when class was dismissed, Dirk caught up to Rowena and Alice.  
  
“Don’t worry about Rantipole,” he said. “Eventually he’ll figure out that he’s too stupid to keep up, and he’ll drop out.”  
  
“I suppose,” said Rowena quietly, looking over at Alice. The three walked in silence for a few moments, and finally, Dirk shrugged and walked away. After he’d gotten out of earshot, Rowena asked, “Why does everybody call him my boyfriend? And why doesn’t he ever deny it?”  
  
“Oh, please,” said Alice. “You’re can’t be _that_ blind.”  
  
“What?” demanded Rowena.  
  
“My gosh, you really don’t see it,” said Alice. “All right. Here’s a news flash for you. Dirk likes you. A lot.”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“Yes, you. And I think you should give it a try. You’d make a cute couple. The Runes expert with the Arithmancy genius. He’s not bad looking. A little skinny though.”  
  
Rowena would not consider it for a minute. “No. He’s very intelligent, of course, and I suppose he’s nice enough, but he just doesn’t . . . I mean, he doesn’t make me feel . . . you know.”  
  
“Far be it from me to push,” said Alice. “But listen, I’m sorry to do this to you, but I think I’m going to have to drop Runes.”  
  
“You failed the test?”  
  
“No, I passed, but just barely. I guess I just don’t have the knack.”  
  
“I’ll tutor you,” said Rowena.  
  
“I don’t think so. Not as long as Rantipole’s in the class anyway. He’ll make life unpleasant for both of us.”  
  
Rowena could not hide her disappointment.  
  
“C’mon, Rowena. We already have so many classes together. And it’s not as though Runes is something I’ll really use in my life. Let’s face it, it’s not a subject with many practical applications.”  
  
“How can you say that?” cried Rowena. “All the ancient spell scrolls are written in Runes.”  
  
“How likely am I to run across any ancient scrolls?”  
  
Rowena lowered her voice. “They say that You-Know-Who learned most of his dark magic from ancient scrolls. The Ministry hires translators all the time to read them and work out the counter-curses.”  
  
“Your mother does that?” asked Alice, clearly impressed.  
  
“She’s only done it once. She says she doesn’t have the stomach to read about how to torture people.”  
  
As Rowena finished speaking, Severus Snape, the least popular boy in school, passed them by. Both girls giggled nervously. Severus was a year ahead of them, and in neither of their houses, so they didn’t know him well, but everyone in school knew he’d ben unofficially dubbed “Most Likely to Become a Death Eater.”  
  
“Do you think he heard me?” whispered Rowena.  
  
“It didn’t look like it, but he gives me the creeps anyway. Let’s get started on that tutoring. I don’t want the likes of _him_ translating any ancient spells.”  
  
Under Rowena’s tutelage, Alice began to improve. They did most of their studying outdoors and away from the prying eyes of classmates like Rantipole, so Rowena was paid back. Alice taught her how to identify most of the surrounding flora, far surpassing the Herbology requirements of their year. Pooling their strengths still further, they devised a complex system of mnemonics, associating the different plants with the Gaelic vocabulary words they were required to learn.  
  
“Wouldn’t it be something if we could make the plants sing the words? Songs help you remember things better, you know” said Rowena.  
  
“That sounds like highly advanced magic,” said Alice.  
  
“But a fun challenge,” returned Rowena. She began to speculate about how to go about it, but she soon lost her audience to an informal Quidditch game that was forming nearby.  
  
"I guess this spot has been discovered,” grumbled Rowena.  
  
“Yeah,” said Alice vaguely as she watched the boys choose sides.  
  
Rowena knew a lost cause when she saw one, but instead of going away, she entertained herself by experimenting with the plants. After a long while, she was able to get some low but tuneful hums. She became so engrossed in what she was doing that she didn’t even notice that Dirk Cresswell had walked up to them, and was standing right near her, watching her every move.  
  
“That looks interesting,” he said.  
  
“It’s just silliness, really,” said Rowena, pulling her wand back shyly.  
  
“Well, yeah,” said Dirk, “but creative silliness. Got anything planned for the Hogsmeade weekend?”  
  
“Alice wants me to help her pick out a new dress robe.”  
  
Alice turned around at the sound of her name. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”  
  
"I said that we’ll be robe shopping in Hogsmeade this Saturday.”  
  
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you about that. I can’t go. I’m doing a favor for Professor Sprout.”  
  
“On a Saturday?”  
  
“So go around with me then,” Dirk jumped in. “I hear Madam Puddifoot’s is really nice.”  
  
“I’ve heard that, too,” said Alice.  
  
If they had been sitting at a desk, Rowena would have given Alice a kick to keep her quiet, but out in the open, the only thing she could do was glare, and that would have hurt Dirk’s feelings.  
  
“You wanna go, Rowena?” Dirk asked anxiously.  
  
“Ummm . . . all right, I suppose,” she said.  
  
“Brilliant! I’ll meet you in the common room Saturday morning.” and with that, he ran back to the castle, unwilling to stick around lest his luck should change.  
  
“I thought you said you weren’t going to push!” cried Rowena. “You two had that planned!”  
  
“I promise you we didn’t,” said Alice. “I’ll admit I’m glad you have a date, but –”  
  
“So what’s this story about Professor Sprout? Are you telling me you made that up on the spot?”  
  
“Well, no. But I didn’t make it up for Dirk’s sake. It’s my official excuse for missing Hogsmeade. You see, I have a date, too.”  
  
Rowena opened her mouth to argue and then closed it again. After a few moments, and in a much softer tone of voice, she asked, “With who?”  
  
Alice grew very serious. “You must promise never to tell _anybody_. You’re the only person I’m telling, and it absolutely must not get back to Darius. You understand?”  
  
Rowena nodded. Then Alice smiled and said breathlessly, “Frank Longbottom.” As he was one of the boys playing Quidditch, Alice turned back to the game.  
  
Rowena felt a bit jealous. Dirk didn’t make her want to get all dreamy like that. But once she was through indulging those feelings, she considered what Alice had told her.  
  
“You’re staying at school while everyone’s at Hogsmeade weekend just to keep your date a secret?”  
  
“That’s right,” said Alice.  
  
“But don’t you think that’s taking things a bit far? I mean, Darius can’t really object to him. They’re friends, aren’t they?”  
  
“All the more reason,” said Alice, her eyes still on Frank.  
  
“But Frank is Head Boy!” said Rowena.  
  
“You’re such a Ravenclaw. Academic honors may impress you, but that’s not the way my family thinks. They want me to date boys from,” she screwed up her face distastefully, “ _our social circles_. Frank’s parents are working class.”  
  
“That’s ridiculous,” said Rowena.  
  
“Isn’t it?” said Alice. “So we have to keep it a secret. It’ll be harder when he’s out of school. I don’t know how or when we’re going to meet. But we have a few months till then.”  
  
Rowena wondered how Alice could speak with so much certainty. Most Hogwarts relationships lasted only a few months. But here was Alice, only thirteen and a half, confident that she had a future with a boy of seventeen. Perhaps this was what her mother felt when she first met her father. Rowena always assumed that she’d fall in love exactly that way, but instead, it was happening to Alice.  
  
The Quidditch game ended. The boys on their brooms descended to the ground in a mass of hand shakes and pats on the back. Frank glanced over once at Alice, but when Darius patted him on the back, he turned around and did not look back again.  
  
Darius gave Alice and Rowena a friendly wave. They returned it, though Alice continued looking Frank’s way.  
  
“He’s already been recruited by the Auror Department,” she said proudly. “It’s dangerous work, especially now, but it only makes me love him all the more.” She turned toward Rowena with the same seriousness as earlier. “My parents would never approve of my marrying an Auror. They want You-Know-Who defeated, of course, but they’ll leave the fighting to someone else, never risking themselves. When I come of age, I’ll live by my own values, but until then, I’ll do what I need to do to keep them happy.”  
  
Rowena nodded silently. Already she was talking about marriage. The adults in their lives often said that the war was forcing them to grow up too quickly. Alice was living proof of it.  
  



	13. Chapter 13

Rowena kept Alice’s secret, and when she began to see less and less of her, she understood it was because of Frank. For lack of company, Rowena began spending more time with Dirk, and they achieved the status of “going out.” She even let him kiss her, which seemed the thing to do, but though she wouldn’t admit it to anybody, she found it sort of disgusting. Her roommates thought that boyfriends were a sign of social status, but Rowena wished she could have a secret love like Alice’s instead of her very public relationship with Dirk.

She did discover, though, that being a couple in public had a positive side. It was one way of avoiding long snogging sessions. As the weather grew colder and walks around the school grounds became less pleasant, Rowena and Dirk began spending most of their time together in the Ravenclaw common room. Rowena taught him Rack ‘n Rune, and he proved to be a quick and clever player. Of all the things they did together, Rack ‘n Rune was easily Rowena’s favorite, and it became their trademark. It came as a bit of a surprise therefore when one mid-winter day, sixth-year Helena Juxtafort asked to join them.

“Only an even number can play,” said Dirk.

“We can find a fourth,” said Rowena. Her eyes scanned the room. Everybody was busy talking or studying with somebody else - all except for Leonard Lovegood. Socially awkward and easily overlooked, he was always alone. “Let’s ask Leonard,” she said.

Helena shook her head doubtfully and Dirk emphatically, but Leonard had already looked up from his book.

“Would you like to play Rack ‘n Rune with us?” Rowena asked.

“Yes, I would like that very much,” said Leonard with his characteristically odd formality.

Dirk shot Rowena a dark look, but she ignored it and began teaching the two newcomers to play. They were fast learners, but still played slower than Dirk and Rowena, so to encourage them whenever they scored, Rowena bewitched a few spare titles to spell out “YAY!” When Helena got a very good word, Rowena made the tiles cry “Hooray!”

“That’s rather impressive,” said Leonard.

“I don’t remember learning anything like it in Charms,” agreed Helena, “and I’m three years ahead of you.”

“It’s nothing, really,” said Rowena. “I just like to play around with sounds.”

“People who experiment often come up with the best spells,” said Leonard. “Most people just follow the textbooks, but there’s more to be learned by trial and error, you know. Severus Snape –”

“Is he a friend of yours?” Dirk interjected.

“I have no friends, actually,” said Leonard matter-of-factly. “Severus Snape is my lab partner in Potions, and he knows shortcuts that would baffle even Slughorn. I rather suspect he invents his own spells.”

“Just what the world needs,” muttered Helena.

“As a Muggle-born, you ought to be more careful about who you choose for friends,” said Dirk.

“As I said, I have no friends.” This time, the sadness in his voice was unmistakable. None of the others knew how to respond. After an awkward pause, Rowena put a few tiles together and spelled “FIZGIG.”

“No nonsense words allowed,” said Dirk.

“It’s not nonsense,” Rowena insisted with a grin, “It’s . . . um . . . I read about it for Care of Magical Creatures . . . um . . . ”

“The fizgig,” said Leonard. “It’s an endangered species, actually. It is hunted for its fur because it’s resistant to the harshest of freezing spells.”

“Really?” asked Rowena. “I just made that up as a joke.”

“So did I,” said Leonard. He smiled and looked gawkier than ever.

Helena and Dirk exchanged looks.

“I think I’ve got to call it a game,” said Helena. “I’ve got a Defense test tomorrow.”

“Want to take a walk, Rowena?” asked Dirk.

Rowena didn’t want to. She felt bad about abandoning Leonard so suddenly.

But Leonard took it as a matter of course. “Don’t forget to warm up your robes,” he said. “That doesn’t look like fizgig fur.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Dirk, getting up and pulling Rowena with him. Under his breath he muttered, “Weirdo.”

“Don’t you need to put your game away first?” Leonard asked.

“Oh, it usually cleans itself up and goes back to my room by itself,” Rowena explained.

“That’s rather an interesting charm,” said Leonard.

“But she didn’t invent it herself,” said Dirk. “Her mother cast it for her.”

This was not quite true, but Rowena did not correct the mistaken impression. Dirk pulled her toward the door.

“See you, Leonard,” she said on her way out.

Once outside with Dirk, she began to scold. “You were very rude to him, you know.”

“Oh, come on, he asks for it. He talks too much, he has no sense of humor, and even he admits he has no friends. No wonder. If a person can’t learn the normal social graces, he deserves to be an outcast.”

“Nobody deserves that,” said Rowena.

“Always siding with the underdog,” said Dirk, pulling her closer. “That’s one of the things that I like about you.”

But Rowena liked Dirk much less after that. She respected him for his high standing in their year, an especially remarkable accomplishment for a Muggle-born, but he was a snob, and that she couldn’t tolerate. She knew she had to end it, and after a night without much sleep, and a morning of classes she could barely sit through, she told Dirk.

Unfortunately, her timing could not have been worse. It was Valentine’s Day, and though she had forgotten, Dirk had not. He smashed the heart-shaped box of Chocolate Frogs he’d bought for her and yelled, “Pure-blood snob! Get the h-l out of my sight!”

Rowena was only too happy to oblige. She ran outside into the cold, crying and paying no heed to where she was going. Everywhere she looked, she saw another couple. Darius Smith was snogging Helena Juxtafort.

“Alice is safe at least,” thought Rowena as she hurried past.

She ran further from the castle. Alice and Frank were snogging behind some bushes. She ran toward the Forbidden Forest.

“Hi, Rowena!” called her roommate loudly, showing off because she was walking hand in hand with Sirius Black.

Rowena swerved in the opposite direction and entered the woods. It was one place where she might get some privacy. She stomped over the brambles and paid no attention to whatever might be sticking to her clothes, but as she got in deeper, she began thinking less about Dirk and more about where she was. She’d never been inside the Forbidden Forest before, and she knew it was home to all sorts of dangerous creatures. Realizing how foolish she’d been, she turned to head back to the castle, but she didn’t get very far before a rustling on her right side made her jump.

“Do not be afraid,” said a deep male voice.

But Rowena was afraid. She turned to see who was talking to her.

“Oh, my!” she gasped.

She was standing face to face with a real, live centaur.

For several moments, she simply stood and gazed at him, but then she remembered her manners. “Umm . . . uhh . . . excuse me for staring, it’s just that I’ve never seen a centaur before, except in pictures.”

“It was foretold that we would meet, young Rowena.”

Rowena’s heart began to pound. Meeting a centaur was astounding enough, but how did he know her name?

“The clouds are heavy over Hogwarts castle,” he said. “It is a portentous day.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” said Rowena faintly.

“Human custom,” said the centaur. “I am not familiar enough with it to judge whether it is superstition or has actual power.”

"It certainly has power over Dirk,” thought Rowena.

The centaur meanwhile began pointing out the different cloud formations and explaining what they meant. Rowena listened attentively until she recalled something she had read about centaurs.

“Sir,” she said shyly. “I am grateful you are teaching me all of this, but I thought centaurs don’t share their knowledge with humans.”

“We seldom do; that is true, but there have been exceptions throughout history.”

Rowena’s curiosity got the better of her. “Why me?”

“You are a direct descendant of Rowena Ravenclaw, are you not?”

Rowena nodded.

“It has been foretold that the descendants of the great Rowena would carry some of our knowledge to the human race.”

Rowena knew she ought to feel privileged, but she was a little disappointed. The centaur didn’t know her name; he knew her lineage. It wasn’t that there was necessarily anything special about her personally.

“The path to your destiny is clear but short,” said the centaur. There was more rustling behind them. This time, it was the centaur who was unnerved. “I must return to my herd. I have taken a risk in speaking to you.”

Rowena did not want the centaur to put himself in danger, but she did not understand. “If it has been foretold, then why –”

“Centaurs are not always correct in their interpretations, and the herd disagrees with mine. The path to your destiny is clear but short. Goodbye, young Rowena.”

And with that, he turned and galloped away.

Without the centaur to protect her, Rowena was anxious to leave the forest immediately. She began to run in the direction of the castle. On the way, she bumped right into Leonard Lovegood.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, recovering herself. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“The path to my destiny is clear but short,” she thought, looking at Leonard. “Did you hear what –?” she began.

“Every word,” said Leonard.

“Does it mean . . .” but she was too embarrassed to finish. Leonard was embarrassed, too. “What were doing in the forest?” she asked.

“I was following you. I saw you were crying and upset, and the forest is dangerous, so I thought, perhaps you might need . . .” his hands fell clumsily to his sides, “my help.”

“That’s sweet,” said Rowena.

“I’m not much of a fighter, actually,” said Leonard. “Really, I might not have been any help at all.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” said Rowena.

“I didn’t know you were a descendant of Rowena Ravenclaw,” said Leonard.

“My mother doesn’t like me to tell people.”

“That’s very admirable,” said Leonard.

The two fell into silence, but it was not an awkward one. Neither of them dared discuss the centaur any further. They simply walked back to the castle together in quiet happiness.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We now jump ahead a few years. The Marauders' generation are all grown up!

Rowena took a leaf out of Alice’s book and her relationship with Leonard remained a strictly private matter. Like Alice and Frank, Rowena and Leonard lasted beyond their Hogwarts years, and like Alice and Frank, they shared a vision of how they could contribute to the fight against Voldemort. But unlike Alice and Frank, they did not elope immediately upon Rowena’s graduation. Leonard spent a few years working for his father. The ins and outs of running a business were the same for Muggles and wizards alike, and Professor Dumbledore approved of their plan. When Leonard felt ready to make a go of it on his own, he married Rowena, and a few days later, they were ready to make their announcement.  
  
“Leonard, please stop that. You’re making me nervous,” said Rowena, clamping her hand over his tapping fingers.  
  
“I can’t help myself,” he mumbled, trying to hide his words from Professor Dumbledore. It didn’t seem very respectful after all. Dumbledore’s vote of confidence ought to have been enough for them, but they did care quite a bit what the members of his Order would think. Rowena knew how much Leonard hoped to impress Potter and Black. They’d been in his year at school, and were always too cool to notice him. Leonard preferred Lupin and hoped to have him at the meeting, but they were told he was ill that night.  
  
Rowena felt a little guilty. She had insisted that Alice come because she wanted the support of a friend in her corner. It wasn’t fair that Leonard wouldn’t have the same thing.  
  
She sighed to herself. “Why aren’t we above these things? We’re not teenagers in school anymore. We’re adults in our twenties.” Somehow, though, those adolescent concerns were hard to shake.  
  
Much to Rowena’s relief, Frank and Alice were the first to arrive.  
  
“Ohhhhh,” moaned Alice, rubbing her ears from what seemed to be a painful apparition.  
  
A concerned Frank conjured her a velvety easy chair and Dumbledore, ever the gracious host, sent a cold drink floating her way.  
  
“It means so much to me that you came,” said Rowena earnestly.  
  
Alice nodded as she sipped her drink. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”  
  
Rowena wasn’t so sure, but before she had a chance to say more, a silver patronus in the form of a stag galloped into the room.  
  
“Ah!” said Dumbledore, and he waved his wand around the window frame so that it quadrupled in height and width. Rowena looked out into the moonlit Hogsmeade night. She didn’t see anyone coming. Then, a big gust of wind burst into the room, and out of nowhere appeared James and Lily Potter on a broomstick.  
  
“Potter! An invisibility cloak?” boomed Frank, getting up and shaking his hand.  
  
“Flying has got to be easier than apparating at this stage of the game,” said Alice.  
  
“It is,” Lily agreed. “Much.” James conjured her an easy chair identical to Alice’s.  
  
“I am so sorry, Alice,” said Dumbledore, sending around more drinks. “If I had known this meeting would cause you so much discomfort – ”  
  
“No, _I’m_ sorry,” Rowena interrupted. “I was the one who insisted – ”  
  
“It’s _fine_ ,” said Alice. “I may have been a Hufflepuff, but I can brave a little discomfort as well as any Griffyndor.”  
  
Her husband patted her hand proudly. “Did I tell you that Bagman has been taking bets around the Ministry as to which of you will be first?”  
  
“Ick,” Lily and Alice said simultaneously.  
  
“Ten galleons says it happens on the same day!” said James, but before anyone had a chance to take the bet, the roar of a motorcycle muffled everything and everybody.  
  
“Sirius!” James laughed, and in the next moment, Sirius Black apparated into the room, and the two were clapping each other on the back as though they hadn’t seen each other in years.  
  
“All present and accounted for,” said Dumbledore.  
  
“Think you could have made a bit more noise, Sirius?” Lily asked him.  
  
“Love you, too, babe,” he retorted as he conjured himself a seat.  
  
“As I was saying, all present and accounted for. Now, as we all know, the Order has long been able to boast of its valiant warriors, may they continue to be successful,” Dumbledore paused to raise his glass to them, “but we have been lacking in a press of our own. Leonard?”  
  
Rowena squeezed Leonard’s hand, and with their placards, he took his place at the front of the room. Rowena could see he was nervous; he wasn’t used to public speaking. With his wand shaking ever so slightly, he levitated the placards so that everyone could read the headlines: LOVE POTION OR LOVE POISON?, FLIRTATIONS IN THE WIZENGAMOT, HOUSE ELVES ON STRIKE.  
  
“Let’s hear about the love potion first,” said Dumbledore.  
  
Leonard cleared his throat, pushed up his glasses, and began: “ _The mysterious disappearance of famed cover witch Capricia Knolle from all major fashion magazines has been explained by her personal assistant as “her need for a holiday.” BUT WAS IT?  
  
Skink Tatterdemalion, owner of the Diagon Alley news kiosk, reported that she left her photographs after sprouting fur and long, prehensile tail.  
  
“That was some tail,” said Tatterdemalion. “It was wrapping itself around the palm trees on the travel magazines. Can’t blame her for hiding.”  
  
An unnamed St. Mungo’s potioneer has confirmed that Ms. Knolle has been in the Potion and Plant Poisoning ward for a week, suffering the after-effects of a faulty love potion. The offending ingredients have been identified as a bad combination of chocolate and bubotuber juice, and it is unknown whether this will spell the end of Ms. Knolle’s career._”  
  
“Chocolate and bubotuber juice,” repeated Dumbledore. “Good to know. Now, indulge me. Read my favorite.”  
  
Leonard took a deep breath and started to read the next placard: “ _The promotion of Albus Dumbledore to Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot was widely regarded as a shoe-in, just deserts to the wise, if eccentric, Hogwarts headmaster. BUT WAS IT?  
  
“Dumbledore’s not as great as people think,” said our source, an anonymous secretary employed in the Ministry. “He only got the position because all the witches on the Wizengamot have had raging crushes on him since their own school days. One twinkle from those baby blues and he’s got them eating out of his palm._”  
  
Dumbledore clapped his hand to his heart and cried, “I’m exposed!,” but the other members of the Order didn’t find it at all funny. They looked more like they were considering giving Leonard a good punch in the nose.  
  
“Well, dear friends, what do you say to our new press? Sirius, how about you?” Sirius squirmed in his chair as though he was feeling like an adolescent at now, a schoolboy cornered by the headmaster. “Come now, Sirius, since when have you been afraid to speak your mind?”  
  
“All right, since you’ve asked, I think it sounds like a load of old rubbish.”  
  
“Oh, but doesn’t it, though?” said Dumbledore.  
  
“And I’m sure you never thought very highly of the author either,” said Leonard in a tone that made Rowena nervous. Years of bottled up resentment was about to come pouring forth, not just from Sirius from all the “cool” people they’d known in school. A litany of insults Leonard had suffered soon followed. “Mealy-mouthed prat,” said Leonard. “Weirdo. Mudblood.”  
  
“I’d never use a word like that!” said Sirius.  
  
“We all know about _your_ family,” said Leonard. “I understand you fight solidly on the right side, but who’s to say you haven’t inherited some of the old family values?”  
  
Sirius whipped out his wand and jumped to his feet, “How dare you!”  
  
“Gentlemen!” said Dumbledore, stepping between them.  
  
“He’s nothing like his family,” said James decisively.  
  
Leonard scoffed. Potter’s defense didn’t mean much to him.  
  
“It’s true,” said Lily. “He’s always treated me with respect all the time I’ve known him.”  
  
Both Sirius and Rowena shot Lily looks of gratitude. Since her experience in the matter carried the most weight of anyone else in the room, Leonard calmed down.  
  
“Very well then,” he said, “I am sorry I misjudged.”  
  
“Apology accepted,” said Sirius, his tone cold, but still sincere.  
  
As the tension in the room receded, Alice began to try to get a closer look at the love potion placard.  
  
“May I?” she asked. Dumbledore smiled and nodded, and Rowena could not suppress a wide grin. She knew Alice would be the first to catch on.  
  
“Accio!” said Alice, and the placard sailed into her hands. She examined it for a little while, turning it over in all directions, and finally, holding it upside-down, she read hesitantly: “ _Mrs. Sophie Starkle Rockrimmon is pleased to announce the marriage of her daughter Rowena to the Muggle-born wizard Leonard Lovegood. The couple was married in a small, private ceremony, attended by close family and friends last Sunday._ ”  
  
Frank and Lily peered over at the placard from either side of Alice.  
  
“Congratulations,” said Lily.  
  
“Incredible!” said Frank. “It’s all encoded Runes.”  
  
“The two of you composed them yourselves?” asked James.  
  
“Just as it says, the wedding announcement was penned by Rowena’s mother,” said Leonard. “But the others are a collaborative effort between myself and my wife.”  
  
“But Leonard’s accomplishment is much greater,” said Rowena. “I was raised on Runes. My mother is an expert, and she gave me a quill which can –”  
  
“She’s just being modest,” Alice interrupted. “Rowena’s a genius at Runes. She got me through my O.W.L.”  
  
Rowena blushed and said, “You got me through Herbology.”  
  
“Let’s hear the one about Dumbledore,” said James, “but . . . uh . . . someone else better translate. Runes was never my subject.”  
  
“Try these,” said Leonard, tossing James a pair of multicolored glasses. He was relaxed and enjoying himself now. Rowena was happy to see it.  
  
“Why shouldn’t he triumph?” she thought. “He’s clever, and talented, and deserves his day in the sun.”  
  
James fit the glasses over his regular ones and held the placard upside-down. “This is all about your recent battle with those Death Eaters!”  
  
“Do you think they had raging crushes on me, too?” asked Dumbledore innocently.  
  
“Of course, it would be unwise to use real names in the articles very often,” said Leonard.  
  
“Celebrity names work well,” Rowena continued. “We decided on Capricia Knolle, for example, because she’s famous and frivolous.”  
  
“Just call me Stubby Boardman,” said Sirius.  
  
“Done,” said Leonard, smiling at him as a further peace offering. Rowena smiled, too. Eventually, these two would be friends.  
  
“It’s just like a Muggle tabloid,” said Lily. “Who would have thought . . .”  
  
“My Dad’s an old newspaper man, himself,” said Leonard. “No great success, but his paper stays alive. But he sometimes complains that the tabloids make more money with their lies than he does reporting the truth.”  
  
“And of course _The Prophet_ sells lies masquerading as truth,” said Rowena, “So we thought, why not masquerade truth as lies?”  
  
“Hidden truths are usually the most powerful,” said Dumbledore, “but I suppose that is because most people cannot face truth head on.”  
  
“What’s the code for Voldemort?” Frank asked.  
  
“The Crumple-Horned Snorkack,” said Rowena, proudly.  
  
“The _what_?” said Sirius.  
  
“The Crumple-Horned Snorkack,” Leonard repeated. “Haven’t you heard of it? It’s an extraordinary creature with awesome magical powers, but it’s very rarely spotted and even harder to catch.”  
  
“My goodness,” said Alice, chuckling, “you two . . .”  
  
“That’s positively bizarre,” said James.  
  
“Talk about your hidden truths,” said Lily.  
  
“We used my quill for that one,” explained Rowena. “For such an important code, I felt we should get some help.”  
  
“Of course,” said Dumbledore, “But you haven’t told us - have you decided on a name for our little underground press?”  
  
“Yes,” said Rowena, as all the placards returned themselves to her. “We’re calling it _The Quibbler_.”  
  
 _The Quibbler_ enjoyed a productive and profitable first year. In its first edition, printed only a few weeks after that first meeting, it ran birth announcements for the Potters and Longbottoms. Lily had remarked that having babies in the middle of Voldemort’s reign of terror was the best revenge against him, so an article appeared about that summer’s bumper crop of vervain, a plant lethal to the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. In the following spring, they ran a follow-up article announcing the birth of their own daughter.  
  
“Lily was right,” said Rowena, kissing the baby in herr arms for the millionth time. “There’s no joy in the world like this, and it’s the perfect antidote to all the doom and gloom we have to report.”  
  
But whether _The Quibbler_ ’s subscribers were following the Rune-encoded descriptions of the war or whether they were just looking for laughs, Leonard and Rowena could never be certain. Either way, circulation was wider than either of them had ever dreamed.  
  
The biggest surprise of all was the day of Voldemort’s defeat. Owls flooded in carrying all sorts of rumors, so many that even they, professional rumor peddlers, could not work out the real truth. Only very late that night did Dumbledore send them a report, and then they worked until dawn to produce a special edition with articles entitled THE CRUMPLE-HORNED SNORKACK: EXTINCT OR JUST ENDANGERED? (Voldemort weakened but not dead), BANNED FROM QUIDDITCH (the tragic loss of James and Lily Potter), and GRINGOTTS’ MISPLACED TREASURE (the removal of Harry Potter to his Muggle relatives.)  
  
Rowena fell asleep nursing Luna, and awoke a few hours later to find Leonard still scribbling away.  
  
“Leonard, go to sleep. You’ve earned it.”  
  
“I can’t. There’s been more news,” he said grimly. He handed her an article entitled, STUBBY BOARDMAN RETIRES.  
  
Rowena quickly scanned the article. “I don’t believe it! Sirius Black, a Death Eater? But Dumbledore trusted him implicitly!”  
  
“So did James.”  
  
Rowena sank into her chair, and two sat at the work desk they shared, staring at each other, too shocked for words. Luna gave a sudden coo from her crib.  
  
“I’ll get her,” said Rowena. Cooing right back at the baby, Rowena picked her up and brought her to Leonard, and for a few minutes, the three of them sat together at the desk, parents momentarily cheered by admiring their daughter, who was grabbing everything within her reach.  
  
“Don’t touch, sweetie,” said Rowena, pushing her quill further away. Stroking Luna’s fresh crop of blonde hair, Rowena’s eyes filled with tears. “Lily and James! It’s so tragic! And their poor little boy! He’ll never know either of his parents!”  
  
Leonard put his arm around her. “It’s horrible. They died as heroes, but still, it’s just . . .” And in the next moment, the Lovegood family was sitting in a huddle, with Rowena crying, Leonard rocking her, and Luna sitting on both of their laps at once, blissfully unaware of what it all meant.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another jump ahead in time. Luna is nine years old.

Rowena was sitting at the work desk, unconsciously stroking the end of her quill, and barely taking in the conversation around her. Dumbledore was visiting, updating them on the latest sightings of Voldemort for the next edition of _The Quibbler_. In the years since Voldemort’s apparent defeat, most people had become complacent. “Constant vigilance,” as advocated by the likes of Alastor Moody, was considered a need of the past at best and sheer paranoia at worst. But wizards like Moody and Dumbledore did remain constantly vigilant, so _The Quibbler_ kept going, reporting to those few wizards who were still interested, which wasn’t many. For the Lovegoods, it meant lean times. They had been living off Rowena’s inheritance and maintaining the paper with it. It wasn’t going to last forever.  
  
Rowena sighed. She knew she oughtn’t let it bother her. She had paid a relatively small price in the war against Voldemort. The Longbottoms had paid with their sanity, and the Potters with their lives. She was serving a worthy cause. She could not regret it.  
  
In addition to reporting about Voldemort, _The Quibbler_ also followed Death Eater trials. Many were cleared, claiming to have been under the Imperius Curse. After watching so many of them walk free, Leonard and Rowena became convinced of vast corruption in the Ministry, and every issue of _The Quibbler_ contained several articles about it.  
  
Dumbledore had a different take on matters. He was not at all naive about Ministry corruption, but he was more inclined to accept the innocence of some of the accused Death Eaters and the genuine repentance of others.  
  
“Tom always did pin the blame for his crimes on other people,” he said with a sigh. “The Imperius Curse took it to the next level. This way, people actually did the physical act of carrying out his crimes. As a matter of fact, I would not be the least bit surprised if the spell was Tom’s own invention.”  
  
“Who’s Tom?” asked Leonard and Rowena simultaneously.  
  
“Tom Riddle is Voldemort’s real name.”  
  
“That’s odd,” said Leonard. “It’s so ordinary.”  
  
“Yes, I am certain that is why he changed it,” said Dumbledore.  
  
“Tom Riddle,” Rowena repeated. “Funny, it sounds familiar.”  
  
“Your mother might have mentioned him. He was her favorite student.”  
  
“It can’t be!”  
  
“Precisely what she said when she saw what Tom became.”  
  
“But how could she _like_ him?” asked Rowena in a tone of disgust and incredulity.  
  
“Oh, he was quite charming in his way, and a conscientious Runes student. Your mother appreciated that.”  
  
Rowena sat stunned, trying to take this in.  
  
“Do you now see how many good witches and wizards he hoodwinked?” asked Dumbledore pointedly. “Well, I must be off. Excellent articles this month. Thank you both for tolerating these very late visits.”  
  
“It’s an honor, sir. You know that,” said Leonard, rising from his seat.  
  
“Yes,” said Rowena faintly, rising too. The two saw him to the door, and when he was gone, Rowena walked around as though in a daze.  
  
Leonard reached out for her hand. “All right, sweetie?”  
  
“Mmmm . . . "  
  
“Don’t let it bother you. It’s just like he said. Hundreds of wizards were taken in. We’ve made similar mistakes. We got to liking Sirius Black.”  
  
“It’s not that,” said Rowena. “It’s just . . . I think I remembered how I recognized the name. If you don’t mind, I think I need to write a little.”  
  
“When inspiration hits, far be it from me to stand in the way,” said Leonard. He kissed her goodnight.  
  
Rowena sat down at their desk, picked up her quill, and wrote out, “The Crumple-Horned Snorkack.”  
  
Familiar with the code of its own creation, the quill spelled out _Lord Voldemort_ in the Celtic alphabet.  
  
Rowena then wrote, _Tom Riddle_.  
  
The quill shook itself from her grasp and wrote, _Tom Marvolo Riddle_. And then, the letters swam on the page and reformed themselves into _I am Lord Voldemort._ It was like a speedy game of Rack ‘n Rune being played on parchment instead of tile. And as if this weren’t unusual enough, in the next moment, the quill began to write more: _Heiress of Ravenclaw, the Heir of Slytherin has vanquished you._  
  
“Heiress of Ravenclaw?” wondered Rowena. She supposed that as the owner of the quill, that was her title, but her mother never had mentioned it, perhaps because it sounded so presumptuous. Warnings against boastfulness were a large part of Rowena’s upbringing.  
  
Rowena seized the quill and wrote _Who is the Heir of Slytherin?_ though she already suspected the answer.  
  
 _I, Lord Voldemort._  
  
This was perhaps strangest of all. Rowena had used the quill for years, ever since her mother had given it to her as a graduation gift. It had helped her with Runes, and had written many of the articles in _The Quibbler_. She knew it had a vast memory for languages, but never once had it referred to itself as “I.”  
  
She seized the quill again.  
  
 _You are not Lord Voldemort. You are Rowena Lovegood’s quill._  
  
And the quill wrote back: _I am Lord Voldemort’s Horcrux._  
  
 _What is a Horcrux?_ Rowena wrote.  
  
 _A home for my soul for all eternity._  
  
 _I don’t understand_ , she wrote. _Please explain._  
  
And then the quill stopped writing, which was something else she had never experienced. Until now, it had always obeyed her.  
  
She needed to find out what a Horcrux was. She and Leonard had an extensive library. Though they had been forced to sell many of their valuables to make ends meet, neither could part with the books. Putting down the quill, she went to her bookshelves.  
  
All night long, she pored through book after book, but with no results. She was still up searching in the morning when both Leonard and Luna came in, ready for a family breakfast. Rowena hastily conjured up three bowls of cereal.  
  
“Up all night?” asked Leonard. “That must be quite an article you’re working on. Or have you got an idea for some dazzling experiment that will teach Tim-Tum to hoot in Gaelic?” He tossed the owl a treat as he passed.  
  
“Mmm hmm,” answered Rowena distractedly.  
  
“Looks like a wrackspurt caught Mummy,” said Leonard. “Can you feel it? The room’s loaded with ‘em!” He swatted the air, and Luna giggled. “Be a good girl today,” he told her. “Mummy was up working all night.”  
  
That snapped Rowena out of her reverie. “Luna is always a good girl,” she said. “But where are you going?”  
  
“To cover the Crouch trial, remember?” said Leonard. His tone became more serious. “You must be really upset about it to have blocked it out this way. I thought you were happy he was finally being brought to justice after all these years.”  
  
“No, I am happy – if you can call it that. And thank you for going instead of me. I don’t think I could bear to listen to what he did to Alice and Frank. It’ll be bad enough reading about it.”  
  
“The war is over and the worst is behind us,” he said, kissing her forehead. He sat down to breakfast, and so did Luna.  
  
“How long are you going to be gone, Daddy?”  
  
“I don’t know, sweetie. It’s a big trial. It might go very late.”  
  
Both Luna and Rowena looked crestfallen.  
  
“Ahh, what a fan club! If I don’t watch out, the Helium Huckster will blow up my susceptible little head.”,” said Leonard.  
  
Neither of them cheered up.  
  
“Would you like to hear the centaur story before I go?”  
  
“Yes, please!” cried Luna, perking up.  
  
Rowena and Leonard smiled at her and then at each other.  
  
“A long time ago,” began Leonard, “when Mummy and I were students in Hogwarts, a nargle stung Mummy rather badly. Now getting stung by a nargle tends to muddy people’s thinking, and that is exactly what happened to Mummy. She was running toward the forest, which can be a very dangerous place full of deadly magical creatures.”  
  
“But it has good creatures, too,” Luna interrupted.  
  
“That’s true, but it can still be dangerous. I saw what Mummy was doing, and I was afraid she might hurt herself, so I followed her.”  
  
Rowena slipped her hand into her husband’s as he continued. “The trouble was, I wasn’t thinking quite clearly either. I don’t know what I would have done if Mummy had met up with anything dangerous. But luckily, she didn’t. Instead she met a –”  
  
“Centaur,” Luna finished for him. It was her favorite part of the story. She loved repeating it. “And he told Mommy, ‘The path to your destiny is clear but short.’”  
  
“And then I walked a short path,” said Rowena. “And there was your father – my destined one.”  
  
“I owe so much to that centaur,” said Leonard, finishing the story the way he always did. “Without him, I would have gone one admiring your mother from afar, never believing she could ever like me enough to marry me.”  
  
Rowena’s eyes welled with tears. “I owe him so much, too.”  
  
Leonard hugged and kissed her, then did the same to Luna, went to the doorstep, and apparated away.  
  
“Back to work,” said Rowena. “Scourgify!” she said over the breakfast dishes. She was eager to resume her research.  
  
“Mummy, a wrackspurt’s got me, too,” said Luna.  
  
“Oh?” Rowena forced herself to pay attention. It was time to be a Mummy no matter what big ideas had taken hold of her.  
  
“I didn’t tell the whole story because I knew Daddy had to leave, but didn’t the centaur say that you would bring some of his knowledge to people?”  
  
“Yes, he did say that.”  
  
“Then why haven’t you ever tried to find him again?”  
  
Rowena chuckled. “Centaurs share their knowledge with humans only if they choose to. Many a human has tried to seek advice from the centaurs, but with no meaningful results. I am sure that when the time is right, the centaur will find us. Daddy thinks he will grant me an interview for The Quibbler.”  
  
“Oh, Mummy! I can hardly wait!”  
  
“Shhh. It might happen in a very different way than we think it will. In fact, I think it is absolutely certain that the centaur will take us by complete surprise.”  
  
Luna considered this, and nodded.  
  
“Any other wrackspurts?” asked Rowena.  
  
“Yes,” said Luna readily. “You said Gran has gone to be with Grandfather in a happier place, and you said one of the doors to get there is in the Ministry building. What if the Ministry blocks the door?”  
  
Rowena looked down at her daughter with a mixture of pride for her insight and sadness at how much both of them had lost.  
  
“The Ministry _can’t_ block the door,” she explained. “Nobody can. It contains power far greater than any wizard’s. It’s not in the Ministry’s control. Do you understand?”  
  
Luna cocked her head to the side and considered this. After a while, she nodded to show that her curiosity was satisfied, at least for the moment.  
  
“Why don’t you go play outside? It’s a beautiful day.”  
  
“I want to stay with you. I’ll be quiet. I’ll play Rack ‘n Rune.” And Luna ran to get the game, settled herself on the floor with it, and set it all up manually, playing a strictly unmagical game.  
  
Rowena went back to the sofa, which was still piled with books, and wondered what prompted Luna to ask about the portal. She and Leonard were more open with her than many other parents she knew, but they certainly never told her what happened at a full court trial like Crouch’s. Perhaps it was just a simple matter of Luna missing her grandmother.  
  
And then the idea dawned on her. Father’s unpublished manuscript! If anything would have the answer to what a Horcrux was, it was the book he’d been working on before his death, _The Secrets of Eternity_. Contained in a sealed box at the top of the corner bookshelf, Rowena summoned it to her work desk. She read through each page carefully, every moment amazed at how wise a wizard he must have been. She had been told as much her entire life, but somehow, she had never felt it as strongly as now, reading through his work. She chided herself for not having looked into it sooner, but she supposed that now that she had lost her own mother, she understood him more deeply than she might have previously.  
  
After an hour and a half of reading, Rowena found what she was searching for.  
  
 _The Horcrux is a heinous magical invention of undetermined origin, which allows a wizard to sever his own eternal potential, that is to say, his soul, and thus circumvent death. The caster achieves this by committing a murder. He then conceals the soul fragment in an object of his choosing. As long as the piece of the divided soul remains within the object, the caster cannot die.  
  
Needless to say, this is an unnatural state of existence, and the eternity it offers is illusory. The cruelty required to sever the soul necessarily precludes the soul’s entry into the natural eternal state in the realm beyond. Furthermore, if the Horcrux is destroyed, the caster will die like any mortal, but his afterlife would not be ordinary. Though it is of course unknown what precisely would happen to a fragmented soul after its death, it can be assumed that a soul cut off from life in the earthly realm and barred from entry into the next would suffer excruciating pain and deprivation._  
  
Rowena looked up, her mind reeling with what she had just read. A dreadful feeling came over her, but she had to discover the truth. Taking up her quill again, she wrote: _Heir of Slytherin, the Heiress of Ravenclaw demands to know whom you murdered to create this Horcrux._  
  
She let the quill go, and it wrote, _the Unspeakable wizard, Rowan Rockrimmon._  
  
Rowena shook with rage. So this was the cause of her father’s mysterious death, leaving her mother with a lifetime of grief that overshadowed her own childhood. And for what? So that Voldemort could protect his own life while causing death and destruction in the wizarding world at large?  
  
“Not with my father’s soul,” thought Rowena. She knew what she had to do.  
  
“Luna, go outside,” she said.  
  
“But Mum, I’m being quiet.”  
  
“You’re being very quiet, but I’m going to try an experiment and I don’t want you hurt. Now go out.”  
  
Luna obeyed, but she planted herself by the window to watch. Rowena regretted her use of the word “experiment.” Now Luna was hoping to see her try to make Tim-Tum speak or watch her invent some other frivolous spell, but what she was doing now was anything but frivolous. At least she was standing at a fair distance.  
  
Rowena put her father’s manuscript back in its box, along with all other papers on the desk, and sent the box back to its place on the shelf. Then, with only the quill left on the desk, she cried, “ _Incendio quill_!”  
  
The quill and the desk exploded into a tremendous fireball, far greater than Rowena’s had intended or expected. And then, as though by magnetic force, Rowena felt herself being pulled into it. The flames enveloped her and she collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain. For a moment, she lost consciousness, and in the next, Luna, with eyes as wide as saucers, was standing over her with an empty pot. Luna had put the fire out, but the pain was still excruciating. Then Luna ran out of her sight.  
  
Lying on the floor, Rowena was relieved to see that all that remained of the quill was its golden nib and that too was melting into a puddle.  
  
Luna knelt down beside her, her voice shaking with fear. “I sent Tim-Tum to get Daddy!”  
  
Rowena put her hand on Luna’s. She hadn’t the strength to tell her what a good and brave girl she was.  
  
Rowena felt her mother beckoning her from the other side. She longed to enter her warm embrace and leave the pain behind her, but the sight of Luna kept her in the earthly realm. Somehow, Rowena would try to hang on until Leonard got home.  
  
And then, a strange thing happened. Sounds seemed to fill the room, hundreds of voices all speaking different languages, but none intelligible over another. Above it all was a cold, cackling laugh, but that was the first to die out. After that, the chorus of voices lowered into a hum. Then a new voice rose, a melodious lady’s voice, and it sang:  
  
 _Ephemeral justice, elusive truth  
take time to be uncovered,  
but truth wills out in many years,  
and all has been discovered._  
  
When the song ended, Rowena passed to the other side, where she was greeted not only by her mother, but by a celebration. Future generations would live because of what she had done.  
  
Luna collapsed over Rowena’s body, howling. Rowena cried for her, and called to her to console her. “Sweetie, you’ll see me again in the better place. It’s peaceful here. I’m fine.”  
  
Leonard apparated in, looked over the scene, and then he too fell to the floor, holding Luna and sobbing alongside her.  
  
“Oh, Leonard, darling Leonard,” said Rowena. “Take good care of her. I love you both so much!”  
  
“Did you hear Mommy?” Luna asked through her sobs.  
  
Leonard nodded.  
  
“She said she’s in the better place,” said Luna. “It’s closer than I thought.”  
  
“Of course it is,” said Leonard, and he clasped his daughter to himself, holding her tightly. Rowena hovered over them, gently humming words of comfort.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now Luna is eleven, and it's her first year at Hogwarts.

Ginny Weasley walked aimlessly to the end of the corridor where Luna was standing. She shuddered and blinked and took a few moments before noticing Luna.  
  
“Hello,” said Luna. “Wrackspurt got you?”  
  
“Huh?” said Ginny.  
  
“A wrackspurt. It’s invisible. It flies around and makes your thoughts go fuzzy.”  
  
“Oh,” said Ginny. “Are there a lot of them at Hogwarts?”  
  
“There might be. I’m not a very good judge. We have loads of them at home. But there are all sorts of things here I’ve never seen before. Like those.” She pointed out the window to the winged horses grazing on the lawn.  
  
“Like what?” asked Ginny, looking out the window, too.  
  
“Those horses. They’re rather friendly, you know. They come out of the forest sometimes. Someday, I would like to try flying one.”  
  
“I don’t see any flying horses,” said Ginny.  
  
“You’re looking straight at them,” said Luna.  
  
Ginny, confused, turned away from the window.  
  
“Is that a diary?” Luna asked, looking at the small book Ginny was holding.  
  
“Yes,” said Ginny, grabbing it and tucking it into her pocket.  
  
“I won’t tell anyone,” said Luna. “I keep a diary, too.”  
  
“You do?”  
  
“Yes. My father gave me one as a present for starting Hogwarts. He’s a writer, actually. So was my mother. That’s why I’m so used to wrackspurts.”  
  
“Does your diary write back to you? Does it send you messages and give you advice?”  
  
“No,” said Luna, thinking that sounded like a rather outlandish thing for a diary to do, though it was interesting. But she knew better than to ask to look in another person’s diary. Instead she pointed to a red-haired boy who was coming toward them. “Isn’t that your brother?” she asked.  
  
“That’s Percy, yeah. But who’s that girl?”  
  
“Penelope Clearwater. She’s a prefect in my House,” said Luna. And before Percy and Penelope were close enough to hear, she added, “She’s rather ineffective, actually. Some of the others have been calling me ‘Loony,’ but she never stops them, and I’m quite sure that name-calling is against school rules.”  
  
Ginny nodded sympathetically as Percy and Penelope walked up to them.  
  
“You’re not looking very well,” said Percy.  
  
“She’s recovering from a very strong wrackspurt,” said Luna, “but she’s getting back to herself now.”  
  
“Stay out of this, Luna,” snapped Penelope. “Nobody asked you.”  
  
“I think you’d better go to the hospital wing,” said Percy.  
  
“I’m _fine_ ,” said Ginny, folding her arms defiantly. It looked to Luna that she really was getting back to herself. “Anyway,” Ginny went on, “I have Lockhart’s class soon.”  
  
“For your health, you can miss it. I’ll even go and get you excused.”  
  
“I can do that,” offered Penelope. “You take her to the hospital wing.”  
  
Luna could see that Ginny didn’t like this arrangement at all. “I know how to make you feel better,” she said, and she began to sing, “ _Ephemeral justice, elusive truth, take time to be uncovered_ ” but before she could finish, Penelope burst into giggles.  
  
“Is that a healing spell, Luna?”  
  
“Yes, it is, actually. I heard it once in a very terrible situation, but somehow, it made it feel better.”  
  
Penelope and Percy smirked at each other, but Ginny was staring at her in wonder.  
  
“I’ve read that . . . somewhere.”  
  
“In that case, you ought to be more careful about your choice of reading material,” said Percy, and in a barely-concealed mutter, he added, “ _and_ your friends.”  
  
He grabbed hold of Ginny’s elbow and began to gently push her along. Luna felt sad as Ginny was led away. She had just made and lost her first friend in a matter of minutes. She sighed and began to gather her own things for class.  
  
“Twenty points to Ravenclaw,” said Professor Dumbledore, appearing suddenly out of nowhere. “Ten for your kindness to Miss Weasley and ten for enduring Miss Clearwater’s derision. Of course, I will have to take ten from her - alas, an illustration of how infighting hinders progress.”  
  
He nodded at her gravely, and Luna stared at him, awestruck. He cast a wondrous presence up close, just as she remembered him. Had she not already been standing, she would have risen for him reverently, just the way her mother did at Granny’s funeral. She’d done it herself at Mummy’s funeral and again just recently on her first day at Hogwarts. That time, the older students laughed and called her “ickle firstie.”  
  
“You are quite right that name-calling is against school rules. I shall be having a talk with Professor Flitwick about it, oh yes.”  
  
“My Dad said I should think of it as another code, sir,” said Luna.  
  
“Indeed, that is an excellent way of thinking of it, but I must try to stop it anyway.”  
  
Luna smiled. He was just as kind as she remembered him, too.  
  
“And do not worry about losing Miss Weasley’s friendship,” he continued. “It is not her nature to be bullied for long. Now, off to class.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Luna. But as she turned the corridor and walked away, she realized that she’d just missed her chance to ask about the flying horses.  
  
Professor Dumbledore was right about Ginny, and the proof of it came much sooner than Luna had dared hope. Ginny missed Professor Lockhart’s class, but after lunch, she turned up for flying lessons with Madam Hooch and stood right next to Luna. She didn’t care what her brother said. Luna beamed at her.  
  
Ginny was easily the best flyer in their year. Luna was the worst. After an hour of struggling to get off the ground, and then hurtling around uncontrollably once she had, Luna was tired and frustrated.  
  
“All you need is practice,” Ginny told her. “It might be tricky to borrow one of my brothers’ Cleansweeps, but if I can do it at home, I think I’ll be able to do it here.”  
  
“How do you know the brooms will stay with us?” Luna asked.  
  
“Why wouldn’t they?”  
  
“Whenever someone takes something of mine, it always comes back to me sooner or later. It’s been happening since the first week.”  
  
“Oh,” said Ginny. She said that often, Luna noticed.  
  
“I’d prefer to practice flying on one of those horses, actually. Let’s go to gamekeeper’s hut.” Luna knew that Ginny would not refuse. She spent much of her free time there, hoping to catch a glimpse of Harry Potter. Luna hoped to catch a glimpse of the horses.  
  
Once there, Hagrid grinned at the two of them knowingly.  
  
“Nice ter have company! It’s just been me ‘n Fang all day.”  
  
Ginny could not hide her disappointment.  
  
“Wanna come in fer tea?” Hagrid asked.  
  
“No thanks,” said Ginny. From where they were standing, she could keep a good watch on the castle in case Harry Potter came down. Luna wanted to stay outdoors, too. A pair of horses was already approaching the hut. They stopped near a platter of raw meat Hagrid had left out for his dog.  
  
With no sign of Harry Potter, Ginny turned and looked where Luna was staring. She jumped when the larger horse chomped loudly on the meat.  
  
“Are those wrackspurts?” she asked.  
  
“Wrackspurts are invisible,” said Luna.  
  
“Those are thestrals eatin’, Ginny,” said Hagrid. “An’ if they’re invisible ter you, you can count yerself lucky,” Looking at Luna seriously, he asked, “What’s yer name?”  
  
“Luna Lovegood.”  
  
“Ohhh,” said Hagrid as though the name meant something to him. Luna wondered how much he knew. Many of Professor Dumbledore’s friends knew about _The Quibbler_ ’s mission when it first started, but most of them abandoned it after her mother’s death, thinking her father had become unhinged from grief. Her father said it was a useful pretense, just like “Loony” Lovegood.  
  
“There are invisible horses eating the meat?” asked Ginny.  
  
“Well, they’re not invisible to everybody. Some people can see ‘em. People who’ve seen another person die.”  
  
Ginny looked horrified, and Luna hummed a little of the quill’s song. When she felt a glimmer of the better place, she asked, “May I ride one?”  
  
Hagrid was a bit taken aback, but he seemed to be considering it. “Well, I can’t deny they could do with the exercise. And they know yer not allowed out of bounds. Arright.”  
  
Luna was delighted. She approached the smaller thestral and let it nuzzle her.  
  
“Yer a natural!” Hagrid boomed. “She’ll let you mount her. Mind you stay above the forest. Don’ go in.”  
  
Luna mounted easily, and the thestral flapped its wings gently and lifted her into the air. They sailed over the entire forest, and Luna was exhilarated. She was now higher than any broom had ever taken her, and the ride was much, much smoother.  
  
“Let’s do this every day,” she said to the thestral, stroking it. The thestral seemed to bob her head, as if she agreed.  
  
Luna looked at the forest below them. The splendor of autumn colors was breathtaking in itself, but the thicket made it difficult to distinguish the different magical creatures below. The silvery unicorns were easiest to pick out, and once Luna got used to their galloping movements, she could pick other thestrals and even centaurs. How she longed to speak to a centaur – the wisest creatures in the world! But Mummy had told her they spoke to humans only when they chose. There was no point in seeking one out. It was the last thing Mummy taught her.  
  
Luna looked back at the castle. Students were milling about all over the grounds. Among them, Luna spotted a striking threesome: a boy with flaming red hair like Ginny’s, a girl with frizzy brown hair, and, recognizable from his dark-rimmed glasses, Harry Potter. They were heading toward Hagrid’s, and if Ginny was busy watching her riding the thestral, she would miss seeing that Harry was coming.  
  
The thestral must have sensed that Luna was thinking of returning because she turned them around and steadily lowered them. They touched down from the same spot where they’d left, and Luna dismounted, her eyes shining up at Hagrid.  
  
“Thanks!” she said.  
  
Ginny, meanwhile, had spotted Harry Potter.  
  
“C’mon Luna, let’s go!” she said hurriedly.  
  
Luna couldn’t understand why Ginny was in such a rush to leave. Hadn’t she been waiting for Harry Potter that whole time? Ginny sometimes behaved very oddly. But she was a friend, and Luna was grateful.


	17. Chapter 17

Luna’s next few years at Hogwarts were very educational and very lonely. She was the best in her year at Runes and Divination and doing well in all her other subjects, but other than Ginny, she had no friends. Worse still, Ginny had less and less time for her as the years went on. She became quite popular after snapping out of Voldemort’s spell. Few people knew all the details, but they understood that she’d been caught under some strange enchantment that first year. Plenty of people said that the only reason she’d befriended Luna at all was because of the enchantment. Of course, nobody ever dared say that in Ginny’s hearing. They liked her too much to hurt her feelings. But nobody seemed to care about Luna’s, and without Ginny to defend her, it became an accepted “fact.”  
  
In its way it was a valuable lesson. Luna had long wondered how people came to believe lies, why _The Prophet_ flourished while _The Quibbler_ floundered. But because she was a devout reader of _The Quibbler_ , she knew the truth. On Professor Dumbledore’s recommendation, Ginny’s father allowed _The Quibbler_ to print the full story. To protect Ginny’s privacy and reputation, it ran under such complicated code that Luna had to read it with Spectrespecs. Of course, she kept the secret. For that, she had Ginny’s genuine gratitude and friendship.  
  
Luna’s prospects began to brighten in her fourth year. Even on the train ride up to school, she began to meet people. Ginny introduced her to a group of Gryffindors: her brother Ronald, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Neville Longbottom. Hermione was rude about _The Quibbler_ , but Ronald was very funny, and Harry and Neville seemed nice enough.  
  
In the common room, she received a welcoming wink from the portrait of Rowena Ravenclaw. Luna walked close to it and sang softly in tribute, a personal ritual she’d begun since her Sorting. She did not stop for anything, not even when she heard the others snickering at her. But once she was finished, she turned and said sharply, “She’s our founder. You ought to treat her with more reverence.”  
  
They laughed even harder after that, but Luna walked away with dignity. She knew she had behaved properly.  
  
She walked upstairs toward her room, but on the way, she heard crying coming from the bathroom. Thinking it was Moaning Myrtle up for a visit, Luna went in. Much to her surprise, Myrtle was not there alone, nor had she been the one crying. It was Cho Chang.  
  
“Boy trouble,” Myrtle explained.  
  
“It’s much more than boy trouble,” sobbed Cho. “I just didn’t think it would be this hard . . . to be back with everybody . . . without Cedric.” She buried her face in her hands and broke down into even louder sobs.  
  
Luna stepped toward her, patted her on the back, and began to sing the song. It seemed to work. By the time Luna finished the last of the lyrics, the reassurance that the truth would be known in the end, Cho was looking up at her.  
  
“Do you really believe that? Do you think I’d have peace if I knew the whole truth about what happened to him?”  
  
“I think it would make things easier,” said Luna.  
  
“I have so many questions,” said Cho, desperately.  
  
“I think the person to ask is Harry Potter.”  
  
This, apparently, was the wrong thing for Luna to have said. Cho started crying again.  
  
“I _told_ you it was boy trouble,” said Myrtle.  
  
Luna didn’t dare comment. She didn’t understand much about boys, at least not in the way that Cho thought about them, and there was no sense pretending she did.  
  
“Harry Potter is fickle,” Myrtle went on. “He used to visit me all the time, but he stopped.”  
  
This bit of information surprised Cho so much that she hiccupped and gave Myrtle a puzzled look. She stared at her for several moments and then seemed almost to smile as a new idea dawned on her.  
  
“Myrtle, if you’re dead, how is it that you can talk to us? Do you know other dead people? Can you - ”  
  
But before Cho could say more, Myrtle floated toward her and hovered over her menacingly.  
  
“Oh, sure, remind me that I’m _dead_! How considerate of you! You get to cry over your poor dead boyfriend, and I never had a boy look at me in my life or my death!”  
  
Then in a swift turn, Myrtle dove into a toilet and disappeared.  
  
“She couldn’t have done it anyway, you know,” said Luna.  
  
“She couldn’t? Why?”  
  
“That’s what it means to be a ghost. It’s not the normal state of things.”  
  
“So what’s normal, then?”  
  
Luna sighed. “No living wizard really knows, not even the greatest Unspeakables. But the people we loved are always with us, and sometimes, only sometimes, you can hear them.”  
  
It seemed a little odd to Luna that she should have to explain all this to an older girl. The ignorance of her fellow students often astounded her.  
  
Figuring it would comfort Cho, Luna began to sing the quill’s song again, but this time, she didn’t get a chance to finish. Halfway through the last verse, Marietta Edgecombe walked into the bathroom.  
  
“There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere! What are you doing hiding yourself in here listening to _her_ nonsense? Come to the fifth years’ room. Everybody’s there. Wait ‘til you see the dress robes Mandy Brocklehurst bought. She was in Paris this summer.”  
  
Cho left with Marietta, but from that day forward, she was nicer to Luna. If they were in the common room or in the Great Hall for meals, she would give Luna a polite nod, and sometimes, when she was completely alone, she sought Luna out. But she wanted only to talk about one thing – where Cedric might be – so she was not really a friend the same way Ginny was. And Luna wasn’t able to help her. On top of her grief, she had all sorts of other feelings mixed in that completely baffled Luna. She was the nargliest girl Luna had ever met.  
  
Luna’s big chance to make friends arrived on the first Hogsmeade weekend. Ginny invited her to join a club, something that had never happened to her before. And she got to meet with a whole group of people at the Hog’s Head. Apart from her argument with Hermione Granger, she enjoyed herself.  
  
The first official D.A. meeting was even better. She was partnered with a fifth-year Hufflepuff named Justin Finch-Fletchley, but the person who really caught her eye was Neville Longbottom. Nobody wanted to be his partner. Evidently, he had a reputation for clumsiness, and everyone was wary of being on the opposite end of his wand. Luna, who knew how lonely that could feel, set out to be his friend.  
  
For the next few D.A. meetings, Neville didn’t take much notice of her. In fact, he was so intent on learning the spells that he didn’t take much notice of anybody. But Luna noticed plenty about him. She was a keen observer of people, a result of her being alone and ignored so often. From what she could see, Neville was as hard-working as the Hufflepuffs but had Gryffindor values. He was more interested in preparing himself for battle than for O.W.L.s. And most important of all, he was just like her - unfairly overlooked by the other students.  
  
The fifth D.A. meeting was particularly eventful. As the students filed into the Room of Requirement, everyone murmured about the large pile of cushions in the corner, wondering what Harry Potter had in store for them that night.  
  
“Tonight I thought we’d work on Stunning spells,” he announced.  
  
“You mean, we’re going to knock each other out?” asked Marietta Edgecombe uncertainly.  
  
“Wicked!” said one of the Weasley twins.  
  
“Does that mean I have a volunteer?” asked Harry.  
  
The room filled with giggles.  
  
“Go on, Fred,” said the other twin, grinning widely.  
  
“No problem,” said Fred. “It can’t be worse than testing ‘Fainting Fancies.’”  
  
This got an even bigger laugh from everyone in the group, except Luna and Hermione. It was one point on which the two of them agreed: the twins sometimes went too far with their joke products.  
  
Fred walked up to the front of the room and stood across from Harry. Several cushions laid themselves out behind him.  
  
“Cool,” said Fred, looking back at them.  
  
“Stupefy!” shouted Harry.  
  
Fred immediately fell back onto the cushions.  
  
“Whoah!” cried George.  
  
Harry knelt by Fred, pointed his wand at his eyes, and said, “Ennervate.”  
  
After a few dazed blinks, Fred sat up. “That was a lot stronger than a ‘Fainting Fancy.’”  
  
“You let your guard down by looking at those cushions,” said Harry. “Can you stand up?”  
  
“Sure,” said Fred, though he seemed a bit shaky as he got to his feet. While he tried to steady himself, some purple sweets appeared in his hand. He popped them into his mouth, straightened up and said, “George, they’re ours!”  
  
“No way!” said George, but in the next instant, a purple sweet in a wrapper marked “Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes” appeared in George’s hand. “There you have it, folks,” he said, handing it to Lee Jordan and indicating that he, too, should pass it on. “Objective proof from the Room of Requirement. If you need to perk up after a Stunning Charm, get Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.”  
  
“My go now, George,” said Fred. “It’s “Stupefy,” right?”  
  
Fred stunned George on the first try, then George hit Lee Jordan, and Lee hit him back. The room kept up a steady supply of Weasley’s purple pills.  
  
“We’ll go next,” said Hermione as she and Ronald stepped to the fore. “Stupefy!”  
  
Just like the others, Ronald fell directly onto the cushions, but it took three ‘Ennervates’ to rouse him.  
  
“Oh, Ron, I’m so sorry,” cried Hermione when he finally came around. “I was remembering those students passing out from Fainting Fancies that day in the common room, and oh, I’m sorry, Ron.” She helped him up, which made him turn almost as red as his hair, though Luna suspected he was enjoying her fuss over him.  
  
“You can sit this round out, Ron,” said Harry. “Who’s next?”  
  
Ginny raised her hand, but Michael Corner, her usual partner, did not.  
  
“How about you, Neville?” said Harry. “You do me.” He moved over to the cushions.  
  
Neville reluctantly came forward, tried a few times, but the most that happened was that Harry got a blank sort of look as though he’d been caught by a wrackspurt. Luna understood that Neville was suffering from Loser’s Lurgy or some similar lapse in confidence, so she moved near where Harry was standing so Neville could get a full view of her. She was going to beam her most positive thoughts at him.  
  
“Do what Hermione did,” advised Harry. “Think of something that makes you angry.”  
  
“You can do it, Neville,” Luna thought at him.  
  
Neville screwed up his face in concentration and shouted, “Stupefy!”  
  
And the next thing Luna knew, she was lying on the floor with the cushions beneath her, and Neville was leaning over her.  
  
“Are you all right?” he asked worriedly.  
  
“Yes,” said Luna, though in fact she was feeling rather funny in a good sort of way. There was something about having Neville so near to her, with his eyes and voice so full of concern, that made her feel like she’d just been hit with a very subtle yet powerful cheering charm.  
  
“She’s fine, Neville. See how she’s smiling,” said Ginny. The two of them helped Luna up. “I think that was the strongest Stunner we’ve seen all night,” Ginny added, patting Neville on the back.  
  
“You’ve just got to work on your aim,” said Harry.  
  
But Neville seemed barely to notice him. As soon as Ginny had touched him, Neville began staring at her absently, looking much the way Roger Davies used to whenever Fleur Delacour was nearby. And at that moment, for the very first time ever, Luna felt the harsh sting of a nargle.  
  
“Maybe we’d better work on the impediment jinx instead,” said Harry. “Let’s pair off as usual.”  
  
“C’mon, Luna,” said Justin Finch-Fletchley. “Wow, you should have seen how fast those cushions flew under you. This is the coolest room ever!”  
  
But Luna was still thinking about Neville and the nargle. Her eyes kept straying Neville’s way, and she felt good and warm all over whenever she looked at him. But that nargle threatened to complicate things, just like nargles always did.  
  
Luna looked around the room. Cho was eyeing Harry while Harry eyed Cho. Ginny was also eyeing Harry, though Michael, Neville, _and_ Dean Thomas were all eyeing her. And Ronald and Hermione were bickering again, their earlier tenderness all forgotten.  
  
Luna glanced at Neville and that happy tingle filled her once again. She was certain she would cherish that moment of awakening for the rest of her life. Now she was beginning to understand all those giggly conversations in the dorms and bathrooms. It felt nice to like a boy. But when she considered how many nargles had infested the room, she resolved to protect herself. She wouldn’t let anything spoil Neville’s cheering charm.  
  



	18. Chapter 18

The next time Luna saw Neville, he was sitting alone in the library. Seeing him there made her want to jump for joy, but of course, Madam Pince would never permit such behavior. So instead she contented herself by going over to talk to him.  
  
“May I sit here?” she asked.  
  
He looked up from his parchment. “Sure,” he said. She sat down eagerly and began to unpack her bag, taking out a bag of dried tea leaves she’d saved from Professor Trelawney’s class, a bit of muffin left over from breakfast, a few stray Rack ‘n Rune tiles, her Spectrespecs, the latest issue of _The Quibbler_ , and finally, her quill and parchment.  
  
Neville stared at the Spectrespecs for a moment, and then said, “I’m very sorry about the other day.”  
  
“Which other day?” asked Luna.  
  
“You know. At the meeting when I knocked you out by accident.” His voice got charmingly worried again. “You do remember that, don’t you?”  
  
“How could I forget? It was the nicest thing that’s ever happened to me.”  
  
“Oh,” said Neville, bewildered.  
  
“Ginny used to say that quite often in our first year, you know,” said Luna.  
  
“Huh?” asked Neville.  
  
“She used to say that, too.”  
  
“Oh,” said Neville.  
  
Luna breathed a sigh of relief. She’d mentioned Ginny without feeling a single nargle.  
  
“What are you working on?” she asked.  
  
”An essay for Umbridge’s class,” he said with a grimace.  
  
“Oh, thank you for reminding me! I never did get a chance to fully explain Fudge’s army to you.” Luna checked over her shoulder for Hermione Granger. She didn’t want any naysaying now, though the living proof of Umbridge ought to have made that impossible. But Hermione was safely absorbed in her work, so she continued, “Just as I told you, he uses heliopaths, which are spirits of fire. They’re easy to hide because they have rather an amazing capacity to camouflage themselves. They deceive people into thinking that they’re harmless, but of course they’re quite far from harmless. Do you want to see how it looks when they attack?”  
  
“Um,” said Neville, “I think I’d better work on Umbridge’s essay.”  
  
“Yes, precisely,” said Luna. “Let me show you.” She began to wave her arms around, but her demonstration was interrupted by the jeering of a pair of Slytherin boys at a nearby table.  
  
“Practicing your dance steps, Loony?” said Draco Malfoy. “Surely you’ve heard there’s no Yule Ball this year.”  
  
“Good thing, too, with moves like that,” said the handsome black boy sitting with him. “Even Longbottom’s not _that_ desperate for a date.”  
  
“What do you mean? They’re made for each other,” said Malfoy. “She’s Loony enough to make him feel right at home.” Then the two of them began to snicker loudly.  
  
Luna was angry. It was bad enough that they interrupted her conversation with Neville, but they called her that hateful name. She couldn’t get used to it no matter how hard she tried.  
  
But Neville was even angrier than she. While the two Slytherins were holding their stomachs from laughing, Neville whipped out his wand and shouted, “Stupefy!”  
  
Malfoy’s head fell onto the table with a loud knock. His friend stood up scowling and Luna was afraid he would really hurt Neville, but Madam Pince stormed over to them just in the nick of time. While she revived Malfoy, Hermione came running up.  
  
“I heard everything, ma’am. Neville was provoked.”  
  
“I heard everything, too,” said Madam Pince, “and I’ll be speaking to _both_ Heads of House. Zabini, take him up to the hospital wing. And you two - OUT!”  
  
They didn’t need telling twice. Once outside, Neville said, “I’ll probably get detention for that, but it was worth it. I don’t care what they call me for bungling my way through Potions or for flying like I’ve overdosed on billywigs, but _nobody_ makes fun of – ” He stopped abruptly.  
  
Luna, in her eagerness to thank him, picked up where he paused. “I do so hate it when they call me ‘Loony.’ But nobody’s ever defended me the way you did. Ginny threatens sometimes, but she hasn’t fight actually fought anyone.”  
  
“Loony, I mean, Luna,” said Neville, “I can’t take credit for what I didn’t do. I don’t like what they called you, nor what they said about me, but what really made me angry was . . . something else.”  
  
“Oh,” said Luna. “What?”  
  
Neville suddenly got a stricken look in his eyes. “It’s not important,” he mumbled.  
  
“It must be very important if you were willing to fight for it.”  
  
“Well, yeah, it is, but I . . .” He avoided her eyes and began to walk faster.  
  
“Oh, I understand. This is a matter of confidentiality. My father is a press wizard, so I’m quite familiar with those.”  
  
“Umm . . . yeah, right,” said Neville. “Well, I think I’d better go see Professor McGonagall and tell her myself. The punishment will be lighter if I don’t try to avoid her. I just hope she doesn’t Floo Gran. I’ll see you, Luna.”  
  
“Oh . . . well, goodbye,” said Luna as he ran up the stairs. It felt worse than the day Ginny’s brother led her away. Luna looked around hopefully, thinking Professor Dumbledore would pop out of nowhere and assure her that Neville would be back again soon. After a few moments, she gave up and headed back to the dorm.  
  
“At least I can enjoy the memory of him,” she thought, and she began to recall everything they’d said to each other, right up to the Very Important Thing which he felt he had to defend. She knew better than to press Neville if he was unable to give details, but if it really was important, it might have been written up in _The Quibbler_. She doubled back, climbed the stairs leading to the Owlery and dashed off a note.  
  
 _Dear Dad,  
  
Just as I told you in my last letter, I’m making lots of new friends this year, people who are really interested in Snorkack hunting and defusing heliopaths. One of the most dedicated is Neville Longbottom. He’s very nice, too. Have you ever heard of him?  
  
Love,  
Luna  
  
P.S. I got an “O” on my last Runes assignment._  
  
Luna looked over her letter. In these treacherous days, she knew she had to be careful about her language. But the letter was sufficiently vague about the things that would matter to the Ministry, and for some reason, she’d been sketchy about Neville, too. She didn’t know why, but she felt strangely shy about telling Dad all about the way he affected her. Neville. That was unusual because Luna had never been shy with her father about anything before, but something about this felt so private.  
  
The next day at breakfast, the owl returned with a small envelope containing a note from Dad and a few old clippings from The Quibbler. She read her father’s note first.  
  
 _Sweetie,  
I am very happy you are making so many friends who share our values. I am sure Mummy is especially happy about Neville Longbottom. She was a very close friend of his mother’s. In fact, the Longbottoms used to visit us now and again and you and Neville would play together, but you were both so little at the time, I am sure neither of you can remember it now.  
  
Enclosed are two old Quibbler articles. I have never shielded you from the truth, and I will not do so now. But I must warn you: their content is as shocking now as it was back then. Please write back if you want to discuss them.  
  
Keep studying hard!  
  
Love, Dad_  
  
Luna did not know quite what to expect. She looked at the first article, headlined “SNORKACK MATING SEASON.” Luna promptly turned it upside down and saw that it was written in highly advanced code. She fished around her bag for her Spectrespecs, put them on, and read: _Aurors Frank and Alice Longbottom were discovered in their home last night injured to a point of permanent incapacity. St. Mungo’s Chief Healers report that except for their tongues and throats, the Longbottoms show almost no sign of physical damage, though each is severely mentally impaired. The Healers surmise that the Longbottoms were first magically deprived of their power of speech and then subject to the Unforgivable Cruciatus Curse for unnaturally long durations.  
  
In the words of Chief Healer Mimrose, “The bastards who did this didn’t even allow them the release of screaming, and I make no apologies for my language.”  
  
Speculations are rampant as to who perpetrated this atrocious crime. The Auror Department of the Minstry claims to be in the midst of a thorough investigation into the matter but would give no further details.  
  
A grief-stricken Albus Dumbledore, close friend of the Longbottoms, theorizes that the act was probably committed by Death Eaters in search of information as to their former leader’s whereabouts.  
  
“The crime fits their perverse idea of justice,” said Professor Dumbledore. “The Longbottoms would not talk, so the perpetrators deprived them of speech. It is thoroughly abominable.”  
  
The Longbottoms will now reside in St. Mungo’s closed ward. Their four-year-old son Neville will be raised by his paternal grandmother._  
  
When Luna looked up from the article, her face was soaked with tears.  
  
“What’s with her?” someone asked.  
  
“Maybe somebody killed the Snorkack,” answered another.  
  
“Hey, her Transfiguration homework is sticking out of her bag. Grab it, will you?”  
  
Luna did not give them the satisfaction of looking up. She moved on to the next clipping, dated six years later.  
  
“When Mummy died,” she thought, pointlessly drying her eyes.  
  
The article covered the trial and conviction of Neville’s parents’ torturers. Professor Dumbledore had been correct. The perpetrators were Death Eaters and they did everything he’d guessed and worse. Crouch, the youngest of them, claimed innocence and begged for mercy, but the witch named Bellatrix Lestrange gave a full and proud confession with all the brutal details. Luna stopped reading halfway through.  
  
“Miss Lovegood?” came a gentle voice from behind her.  
  
Luna turned around and looked up. It was Professor Dumbledore. Except for the two of them and the house elves clearing the tables, the Great Hall was empty.  
  
Luna stood up and showed him the articles. It was the simplest way of explaining her tears.  
  
“I see,” he said gravely. “Am I correct in surmising that you sought this information from your father after the incident in the library?”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“And Neville told you nothing?”  
  
“Never, sir.”  
  
“Then I trust you to keep this information to yourself.”  
  
“Yes, of course, sir,” said Luna, as a few more tears spilled from her eyes. But it was useless for her to say what she was thinking. What would a “poor Neville” or an “it’s so horribly unfair” do to change the situation?  
  
“May I ask,” began Professor Dumbledore, “do you think you will treat Neville differently now that you know about his parents?”  
  
Luna pondered the question. She thought of Neville’s dedication to the D.A. She thought of his bravery in taking on those two Slytherins. “I don’t think I will be able to help it, sir,” she answered. “Now that I know, I respect him even more.”  
  
“That is precisely what I expected you to say,” said Professor Dumbledore. “Whether he knows it or not, I think Neville has just won himself the ideal confidante.”  
  



	19. Chapter 19

After her conversation with Professor Dumbledore, Luna could not have been more eager to fulfill his word and talk to Neville again, but Neville was decidedly uninterested. In fact, he seemed to be studiously avoiding her. Perhaps he felt he’d revealed too much that day at the library, or perhaps it was for some other reason, but he never talked much at the D.A. meetings, and they didn’t run across each other very often. Luna continued to see him working in the library, but Hermione Granger warned her against distracting him there. It was his O.W.L. year after all.  
  
So other than the sporadic D.A. meetings, the weeks before winter holiday were lonely for Luna, perked up by occasional chats with Ginny. Cho continued dropping by her room, too, but those conversations were anything but perky.  
  
“I just don’t know what to do,” Cho moaned one day. “I like Harry a lot, but he’s so shy around me. I know it’s because he’s younger and hasn’t had much experience, which is cute in its way, but sometimes a girl wants a boy to take a little more initiative.”  
  
Her face grew dreamy but sadder. Luna understood she was thinking about Cedric again.  
  
“Is it bad if a girl takes the initiative?” asked Luna. She was sure she had no other choice with Neville.  
  
“Well, no, it’s not bad, but it’s much nicer when the boy leads the way.”  
  
“Why?” asked Luna.  
  
“Because that way, you know he really likes you.”  
  
“I see,” whispered Luna, thinking all hope was lost.  
  
Just then Cho brightened up. “Do you know what, Luna? You’re right. Sometimes a girl has to take the initiative.”  
  
“Do you really think so?”  
  
“Yes,” said Cho decidedly, “I think . . . ”  
  
The laughter of other girls on their way to their rooms made Cho jump. “I’d better go. G’night, Luna.”  
  
“Good night,” said Luna as the door quickly closed behind Cho.  
  
Alone again, Luna sighed and looked around her empty room. Her eyes fell on the roaring lion hat she'd made for the Quidditch match, an experiment with sound and Transfiguration that would have made her mother proud.  
  
“It _was_ a hit,” she thought to herself. And then she grinned. Now she knew how she could take the initiative with Neville! She would try her hand at creating a model _Mimbulus mimbletonia_ for him. Perhaps she could even get it to squirt Stinksap, too.  
  
And except for the Stinksap, Luna had it ready on the night before winter holiday. Harry Potter called a D.A. meeting that night, and in her excitement, to present Neville with his gift, Luna was the first to arrive. While she and Harry waited for the others, she took the opportunity to caution him about nargles and mistletoe. She had a funny feeling he wouldn’t listen, though.  
  
Harry worked them hard at the meeting. The practiced Stunning spells some more, and when Neville accidentally Stunned Padma Patil, Luna felt another nargle sting. It did not last, though. Parvati was the one to fuss over Padma, not Neville. But in all that activity, there was no time to give Neville his gift.  
  
“Perhaps tomorrow at breakfast,” she told herself.  
  
Yet the next morning at breakfast brought another disappointment. Neville was not in the Great Hall, nor were Ginny, her brothers, or Harry Potter. Luna watched as Professor Dumbledore called Hermione Granger to the head table and talk to her about something that made both of them look solemn. Luna grew anxious watching them. Perhaps one of the twins’ jokes had gone very badly wrong and injured all of them. She visited the hospital wing immediately after breakfast.  
  
“Madam Pomfrey, is Neville here? And Ginny? And Harry Potter? And –”  
  
Madam Pomfrey held up a calming hand. “Everyone is fine. Neville is here. He’s having his breakfast. You may visit him.”  
  
Luna found him sitting up and fully dressed.  
  
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re all right!” she cried.  
  
“What did you hear?” asked Neville anxiously.  
  
“Nothing,” said Luna. “But I did see that you weren’t at breakfast and that worried me.”  
  
“Oh,” said Neville, “that’s kind of . . . nice.”  
  
Luna beamed and gave him his present. “Happy Xmas, Neville.”  
  
His eyes grew wide in surprise. “It’s a _Mimbulus mimbletonia_.”  
  
“It’s not real, you know.”  
  
“I can see that, but it’s a very good copy.”  
  
Luna could have danced from his compliment. “I was hoping to make it squirt Stinksap, but it proved rather difficult.”  
  
“Well . . . um . . . thanks. You didn’t have to.”  
  
“I know I didn’t have to. But I wanted to.”  
  
“Well, well,” came a cheerful voice behind them. “Nothing like awarding last minute points before the holiday. Ten points to Ravenclaw, Miss Lovegood. I like to see a student who takes the Sorting Hat seriously."  
  
Professor Dumbledore then shook hands with Neville. “And to Gryffindor, I award thirty. I understand it was quite a charade last night.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Neville, stuffing the _Mimbulus mimbletonia_ into his pocket with his free hand. “What Harry saw – was it real?”  
  
“Yes, I am sorry to say that it was.”  
  
“Is Mr. Weasley – ?”  
  
“He is alive and in good hands at St. Mungo’s.”  
  
Luna gasped. “A Snorkack sighting?”  
  
Professor Dumbledore gave her the slightest nod, though he fixed his eyes on Neville. “You may trust Miss Lovegood with the details, Mr. Longbottom. But now you two must hurry downstairs. Professor McGonagall has arranged for your belongings to be put on the carriage, and I am confident Miss Lovegood’s will turn up when she needs them.”  
  
He escorted them out of the hospital wing, and with a wave of his wand, brought a long staircase from one side of the castle right to where they were standing. “Have a good holiday!” he said, waving.  
  
They looked at each other and ran down the staircase together. Outside, students were hoisting their trunks onto the thestral-drawn carriages.  
  
“Trevor!” cried Neville when he spotted his toad sitting amongst the trunks.  
  
“C’mon!” called Hagrid. “Yeh’ve got a train ter catch!”  
  
Neville grabbed his toad and he and Luna scrambled on.  
  
“Thirty points,” said Neville once they’d settled in. “That’s the most I’ve ever gotten at one time.”  
  
“What did Professor Dumbledore mean, ‘a charade last night?’”  
  
“Shhhh,” said Neville. “I’ll tell you on the train.”  
  
Luna was happy. That meant she would be sharing her compartment with Neville, the very person whose company she wanted most.  
  
The Hogwarts Express was waiting for them, gleaming red and gold amidst newly falling snow. Luna gave a goodbye pat to her favorite thestral before she and Neville boarded the train.  
  
“You can see them?” asked Neville.  
  
“Yes,” said Luna, realizing from the direction of his gaze that that he could see them, too. But she didn’t want to explain about that just then, and evidently, neither did Neville. He found an empty compartment and shut the door behind them.  
  
“Now I’ll tell you what happened, but it can’t get around. There are already too many people who think Harry’s gone mad.”  
  
“Well, I _don’t_ think so,” said Luna, “and as I’ve told you, I know all about confidentialities.”  
  
“Right,” said Neville. “Well, first, you have to understand something about Harry. Sometimes he gets pains in his scar, and it’s never a good sign. I live with him, and I can tell you, it’s been happening more and more often. And well, you know what’s happening or you wouldn’t be in the D.A.”  
  
Luna nodded. _The Quibbler_ had done a few articles about Harry’s scar, but exactly how it worked was essentially a mystery, even to Professor Dumbledore.  
  
Neville continued his story. “So last night, Harry woke up clutching his scar. It was the worst I’d ever seen him. He vomited and started saying terrible things – that a snake attacked Ron’s Dad. I didn’t know what it all meant, but I knew I had to run for help.”  
  
“Whose?” asked Luna.  
  
“Professor McGonagall. She’s our Head of House after all. She was thanking me the whole way back to the dorm, and she also said that Harry’s nightmare might be real.” Neville paused to shudder.  
  
“Where could Mr. Weasley have been that a snake would bite him?”  
  
“I don’t know, but I was pretty sure it was real because McGonagall took Harry _and_ Ron to Dumbledore, and when she came back later, it wasn’t with them, she was with –”  
  
“Not Umbridge?”  
  
Neville nodded. “The two of them were talking so loud, they must have woken every boy in the dorm. McGonagall was telling Umbridge a whole long story about how _I’d_ been the one to get sick, and _Harry and Ron_ were the ones to call her. Then she said she’d just been trying to Floo my Gran to see if I could go home early, but Gran must disconnect her Floo at night because she couldn’t get through. So she’d come back to the room to bring me up to the hospital wing for the night.  
  
“Well, once I’d heard the story, I understood that McGonagall did not want Umbridge going into the room with Harry out of bed. I knew just what to do. Lucky thing I’d bought some Puking Pastilles from Fred and George in case I needed a quick out of Snape’s exam. I wolfed down a few, went outside, and um, well . . . you know . . . all over Umbridge.”  
  
“All over Umbridge?” repeated Luna. Then, unable to stop herself, she burst into giggles. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, holding her stomach as her eyes filled with tears of laughter.  
  
“It’s all right,” said Neville, laughing too. “McGonagall couldn’t keep a straight face either.”  
  
The thought of stiff Professor McGonagall stifling a laugh was too much for them. They giggled so loudly, people passing by their compartment gave them strange looks, and that only made it seem funnier. A victory for the D.A. and none of those “cool people” knew it!  
  
Finally, when their laughter died down, Luna said, “I’m glad to hear Mr. Weasley will be all right. You ought to tell Fred and George how you used their product. I think they’ll be quite pleased.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Neville. “I reckon they will.”  
  
A small pang of guilt hit Luna. It was horrifying that so many people’s lives were being torn apart by the war against Voldemort – Harry’s, Neville’s, and now the Weasleys had had their second narrow escape. It really wasn’t a laughing matter. But then she remembered the Sorting Hat’s message. If unity and friendship were necessary to win the fight, then enjoying herself with Neville was the best thing she could do.  
  
“Would you like to play Rack ‘n Rune? I have it in my trunk.”  
  
“A Runes game? You take _Runes_?”  
  
“Yes,” said Luna. “Why does that surprise you?”  
  
“Oh, I just thought it was – I mean, usually the kind of people who take Runes – um, do you want to play Exploding Snap?”  
  
“Yes, I’d love to,” said Luna.  
  
They played a long and highly explosive game. Poor Trevor was so frightened by all the noises that he kept jumping away and hiding himself. Neville went after him each time, but after all the interruptions, they decided to stop playing.  
  
“Sorry it wasn’t much of a game,” said Neville.  
  
“I enjoyed it,” said Luna. “I don’t play games very often. Nobody in Ravenclaw ever asks me.”  
  
“Oh,” said Neville, looking out the window uncomfortably.  
  
“Do you have friends in Gryffindor?”  
  
“Well, yes,” said Neville, running his finger along the frosty window, “but I don’t have a _best_ friend. Like in my room. Everyone’s real nice to me and all, but Harry and Ron are best friends, and Dean and Seamus are best friends, so I’m sort of the odd man out.”  
  
“People in Ravenclaw think I’m a bit odd, too,” said Luna, “but you meant something different by ‘odd,’ didn’t you?”  
  
“Umm . . .” said Neville.  
  
“It’s quite all right. I’m trying to get used to it, you know. But I am glad to be going home. I get very lonely at school sometimes.”  
  
“I get very lonely at home sometimes,” mumbled Neville.  
  
There were a few moments of silence as Luna waited for him to say more. She was prepared to pretend she knew nothing about his parents if he chose to confide in her. But he did not. And suddenly, Luna saw the necessity of explaining to him precisely why she could see the thestrals.  
  
“My mother died five and a half years ago,” she began as he turned back toward her, giving her the attention warranted by such a serious topic. “She was a Runes expert and liked to experiment with language and sound. She had a quill that knew many languages and one day, she worked out how to make voices come out of it. But somehow, the spell backfired and killed her. I was the only witness.”  
  
“That’s – that’s horrible,” said Neville. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“It _was_ horrible,” Luna agreed. “And to this day, nobody knows precisely why it happened. She used “Incendio.” Even Professor Dumbledore couldn’t understand why “Incendio” would make a quill sing.”  
  
“Your mother died trying to make a quill sing?” he asked incredulously.  
  
Luna understood that it sounded outlandish to him, but she liked him so much it didn't bother her. She let it pass with a simple correction. “She did not die trying. Her experiment was a success. The quill did sing.”  
  
And then, in her clearest voice, she sang the song for Neville. When she finished, he stared at her open-mouthed, not knowing what to say.  
  
“It’s a very hopeful song,” Luna told him. “Someday we will know exactly why she died. Truth wills out.”  
  
Neville continued staring at her.  
  
“Don’t you understand why I’m telling you this?”  
  
“No,” he said.  
  
“Because truth wills out in the end. Right now, you’re afraid that people will laugh at you for vomiting over Umbridge. Some people probably will. More people will appreciate that she got her comeuppance, but that’s not why you did it. You did it to protect Harry and to make sure sensitive information didn’t get into the wrong hands. That’s worth more than thirty points to Gryffindor, and someday, everyone will know it.”  
  
Neville looked at his feet. His humility was so admirable. But Luna could see that though his head was down, he was smiling at what she said.  
  
The train pulled in to King’s Cross station. Stiff-legged from the long trip, they got up, stretched, and brought their trunks to the platform.  
  
“There’s my Gran,” said Neville. “I’d better go.”  
  
“Thank you for sharing your compartment with me,” said Luna. “It was the nicest ride home I’ve ever had.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Neville, quietly. “I liked it, too.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter opens when Harry and friends happen upon Neville visiting his parents in the closed ward.

It was Neville’s worst nightmare come true. St. Mungo’s was a gigantic place - what were the odds? And Gran – how could she embarrass him like that in front of his friends? It was so unfair. He wasn’t ashamed. He knew his parents were heroes. But that didn’t mean that people weren’t judgmental. Ginny, Harry, Ron, and Hermione might have been the four people at Hogwarts most likely to be sympathetic, but none of them, not even Harry, could understand _this_.  
  
He felt like yelling at Gran right there in the hallway but of course, he wouldn’t dare. She’d had so much grief in her life, he couldn’t possibly cause her more, at least not deliberately. Telling everyone that he just didn’t measure up to Dad was her way of preparing herself for another one of life’s disappointments, but it still hurt.  
  
Swallowing his anger, he asked, “May I visit the greenhouses?” The vulture on her hat bobbed as she considered it. “C’mon, Gran,” he thought, “We need a few minutes away from each other. You know it as well as I do.”  
  
“Very well,” she sighed. “I’ll wait for you in the tearoom. Don’t be long.”  
  
Neville held the stairwell door open for her and they parted ways. Neville tore down the stairs to the Potions and Plants Department, ran past the wards where the patients were, past the potioneers’ laboratory until he reached the glass doors to the greenhouse.  
  
Peace overtook Neville the moment he entered. It was a separate world from the rest of the hospital and indeed from Muggle London and its bustle three storeys below. There was no noise here, nor sickness. Only life – growing, thriving, healthy life.  
  
Being Xmas, most of the herbologists were at home, which disappointed Neville. He’d gotten to know most of them quite well over the years. Seeing them and their plants were what made his visits to St. Mungo’s bearable.  
Neville headed toward the back of the greenhouse to his favorite section: the experimental hybrids. Here the herbologists grafted and grew plants never seen in the magical world unless, of course, one of the experiments turned out to be a fabulous success. Basil Klover, chief of the department, won several awards for his creations. And while Neville was looking over a plant which smelled like gilliflower but whose leaves resembled medrata, he received a friendly pat on the back from Basil Klover himself.  
  
“Neville! Happy Xmas!”  
  
“Happy holidays to you, too, sir,” he said, offering his hand.  
  
“How’s the _Mimbulus mimbletonia_?”  
  
“Oh, it’s doing very well. Professor Sprout and I designed a special light for it so I could keep it in my room.”  
  
“Good old Pomona. I’m glad to hear it. So what year are you in now?”  
  
“Fifth. The O.W.L. year,” said Neville, pulling a face.  
  
“Ohhhhh. I remember my daughter’s O.W.L. year. She kept sending me letters begging for herbs to improve her memory. But I was firm. ‘Hyacinth,’ I told her, ‘if you want memory enhancers, open up your Herbology textbook and work out how to grow some yourself.’ She must have done it, too, she ended up with nine O.W.L.s”  
  
“Wow,” said Neville. He knew he didn’t stand a chance at getting anything remotely close to nine O.W.L.s. Other than Herbology, he wasn’t sure he’d pass even one.  
  
“You get career counseling in fifth year, too, if I recall correctly,” said Mr. Klover.  
  
“Oh really?” asked Neville vaguely, hoping they’d soon get off the topic of school.  
  
“Yes. Here, let me show you something.”  
  
Neville followed him, much relieved. Now they would begin to talk Herbology. Anticipating some fascinating new hybrid Mr. Klover had concocted, Neville was quite surprised when he was handed a pamphlet.  
  
“That’s what we send to Hogwarts. As you see, it’s all about careers here in St. Mungo’s greenhouse.”  
  
“Now to have my dreams dashed in one second,” thought Neville, but as he read the pamphlet, he looked up in amazement.  
  
“You don’t require a N.E.W.T. in Potions?”  
  
“No, just an O.W.L.,” said Mr. Klover, “We work quite closely with the potioneers, but we do recognize that people who can grow healthy herbs aren’t necessarily the best at brewing them.”  
  
Neville broke out into a grin and began making plans in his mind. “I’ve got to pass that O.W.L.,” he thought. “I’ll need Hermione’s help, and I’ll grow memory enhancers, and . . .”  
  
“Consider that official recruitment,” said Mr. Klover.  
  
“Huh?” said Neville.  
  
“I’m offering you a job, Neville.”  
  
“Me? But I’m . . . I’m only fifteen.”  
  
“And how many other fifteen-year-olds can keep a _Mimbulus mimbletonia_ in their dorm room? How many can carry on an intelligent conversation about my hybrids? I’ve known you for years, Neville, and it would be a pleasure to work with you.”  
  
Never had Neville wished so hard for his Gran. What would she say to hearing him praised like this? Would she even believe him if he told her himself?  
  
“Mr. Klover, my Gran – I told her I wouldn’t be long. But thank you so much! I’m . . . it’s . . .”  
  
For the billionth time in his life, Neville found himself tongue-tied. At least it was out of a happy awkwardness for once.  
  
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then. I’ll see you soon.”  
  
“Thank you, sir, thank you,” said Neville, and he flew up the stairs to the tearoom.  
  
Panting, he ran up to her. “Gran, guess what, Mr. Klover offered me a job at the greenhouse when I graduate! Look,” he said, showing her the pamphlet, “All I need is a N.E.W.T. in Herbology and an O.W.L. in Potions.”  
  
“Hmmm,” she sniffed. “If you could learn to love visiting your parents as much as you do that greenhouse, I’d say _that_ was an accomplishment. Come now, boy, let’s go. Algie is expecting us. Auntie Enid must have spent days in the kitchen, no doubt.”  
  
And in fact, the holiday feast was lavish, but other than the food, Neville had little to enjoy. The conversation amongst his elderly relatives was thoroughly boring, and Gran did not relent and admit she was proud of Neville’s job offer until she’d gotten a bit of ribbing from her brother and sister-in-law.  
  
“It’s not her fault that she’s the way she is,” Great Uncle Algie said to him privately. “You know she loves you. It’s just that you’re turning out much more like your Mum than your Dad. She can’t help herself from seeing you and wishing for Frank.”  
  
Of course, Neville knew all this, and said nothing. It wouldn’t do to point out that he was a Gryffindor like Dad, not a Hufflepuff like Mum, because they were sure to draw the wrong conclusion. Even though Gran didn't believe it, he was proud of the ways he resembled his parents. When he’d sat under the Sorting Hat after all the family fears that he wasn’t magical enough for Hogwarts, it told him what a strong combination he was of each of them. He was sure he’d remember its words forever:  
  
“Many people are a mix of traits and are difficult to sort, but you’re the nearest to equal I’ve ever seen. So what will it be? Gryffindor or Hufflepuff? You’re dedicated to fairness, and you’ll work hard for it, but if pushed into a corner, you’d fight like a GRYFFINDOR!”  
  
But of course, until now, Neville had never gotten a chance to prove himself. Earning the ten winning points for standing up to his friends in first year had been a glorious moment for him, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that impressed Gran. The D.A. could make all the difference, but he wouldn’t dare tell Gran that. She’d tell him to quit, and that was one thing he had no intention of doing.  
  
Neville forgave Gran just as he always did. He spent the holiday helping her around the house, tending his plants, and visiting St. Mungo’s a few more times. He was happy when the holiday was over and he could return to school. Now with a greater motivation than ever to do well in Potions, he found himself a quiet compartment where he could review his notes alone. He managed about half an hour of studying until a knock came at his door.  
  
It was Ginny. Dumbfounded by his own good luck, he dropped his notes and they scattered to the floor.  
  
“Idiot,” he chastised himself, and he scrambled to open the door for her.  
  
“Hi,” he squeaked, “Umm . . .”  
  
Together they knelt to the floor and picked up his notes. It was the closest he’d been to her since they’d danced at the Yule Ball a year ago. His heart was racing. Then he thought of the last time he’d seen her, standing in St. Mungo’s with her hand over her mouth, horrified at the truth about his parents.  
  
“Please let’s not talk about that,” thought Neville, as though willing the idea into her mind. She was looking somber, not her usual cheerful self. What should he say to her? If he asked about her Dad, would she ask about his? He didn’t want to remind her of anything about that day in St. Mungo’s, but wouldn’t it be uncaring if he didn’t at least ask?  
  
“Um, how’s your Dad?” he said very quickly.  
  
“He’s much better. He came home just a few days ago. In fact, that’s the reason I’m here.”  
  
Neville, at a complete loss as to what she meant, said nothing.  
  
“I want to thank you for covering for Ron and Harry the night my Dad got hurt. From the sound of it, you really kept your head.”  
  
“How did you –?”  
  
“Luna told me. We were in a compartment just a few doors down. I told her to come in, too, but she saw you were studying and didn’t want to disturb you. But I couldn’t help myself. I just had to thank you.”  
  
Neville stared at Ginny, not knowing whether to rejoice or be embarrassed. His role in the deception wasn’t exactly flattering. It certainly wasn’t the way he wanted Ginny to think of him, even if she was way out of his league.  
  
“Well, since you’re studying . . .” said Ginny, getting up.  
  
“No, don’t leave!” said Neville urgently, but as he heard the words escape his lips, he could have kicked himself. “Insert foot into mouth again,” he thought.  
  
“All right,” said Ginny. “I’ll go get Luna.”  
  
Neville’s shoulders slumped as she left the compartment. A threesome wasn’t quite what he’d been hoping for. Luna was nice, of course, and more capable of rational conversation than he’d originally thought, but compared to being alone with Ginny . . .  
  
“Hello,” said Luna, entering the compartment.  
  
“Um, hi,” said Neville. “Good holiday?”  
  
“Yes,” said Luna, leaning over to pat Trevor. “How about him? Has he gotten over his fright at Exploding Snap?”  
  
“Yeah, he’s all better,” laughed Neville. He’d forgotten about that. Bigger things had pushed it right out of his mind.  
  
“Aww, poor Trevor,” said Ginny, patting him, too, before sitting down. “Do you think he’d mind if we played a few rounds now?”  
  
“We’ll need a fourth person,” said Neville.  
  
“You could ask Michael,” suggested Luna.  
  
Ginny folded her arms and scowled. Luna said nothing and began to hum “Weasley Is Our King.”  
  
After a few bars, Ginny got up resolutely. ““You know, I think I’ll go get him after all.”  
  
“I’m so glad,” said Luna when Ginny had gone.  
  
“Did they have a row?” asked Neville.  
  
“Yes. He didn’t want Ginny to sit with me. He wanted her all to himself.”  
  
Neville could appreciate that.  
  
“It may be a while before she can persuade him to join us, you know,” said Luna.  
  
She sighed, leaned back, and began to hum a new tune, the same one she’d sung him last time, the one her mother’s quill had sung. It gave Neville the chills. He’d witnessed a death also, but Grandpa’s was expected, even merciful. Luna’s mother died in an accident, and a meaningless one at that. How could she bear it? Seeing his parents in their permanent state of injury was often too much for him, but he at least had the comfort of knowing they were noble fighters who’d given their all for the safety of the wizarding world. What could Luna comfort herself with? It was no wonder she was so loony.  
  
“’Ditch the loon,’” said Luna suddenly.  
  
“Huh?” said Neville.  
  
“That was what Michael told Ginny so that she would leave my compartment. She didn’t like it at all. Neither did I, actually.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” said Neville. “He just insulted you. Why’d you suggest he come in here then?”  
  
Luna smiled dreamily and hummed her song some more. Bizarre as it was, she actually took comfort in it. Finally she said, “I don’t want to be the cause of any fights. As a couple, they will not last forever, of course, but they ought to come to that conclusion on their own.”  
  
And then Neville remembered something else about Luna. Whenever she seemed to be reaching new heights in her looniness, she’d come out with some pronouncement of reality that nailed down the truth with absolute clarity. Thinking she must be on the verge of another pronouncement, this time about Ginny, Neville was on the edge of his seat waiting for it.  
  
“They’re not particularly nargly, of course, but he is rather an ibber geblibbener, if you know what I mean.”  
  
Neville did not have the vaguest idea what she meant, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. Even if Michael’s days with Ginny were numbered, it didn’t mean she’d be any more likely to go out with him.  
  
Just then, Ginny led a cowed-looking Michael into the compartment. Sitting beside Luna, she cocked her head toward Neville so that Michael would sit beside him. He did, and she pulled a deck of cards from out of her pocket and began to shuffle.  
  
“How shall we play? Boys against girls or Ravenclaws against Gryffindors?”  
  
“How about you and me against _them_?” said Michael.  
  
Neville didn’t like the mildly contemptuous tone Michael used when he said “them,” but he kept his resentment to himself.  
  
“Well, considering the way we’re sitting,” said Ginny with an arch smile,  
  
“I think it ought to be Ravenclaws against Gryffindors.”  
  
Of course Ginny had intended this all along, but the pleading look Michael gave her showed how little he was interested in her “uncool” friends. Apparently, he was particularly disdainful of Luna, but Luna seemed not to take the slightest notice. Ginny pretended not to. She dealt the cards.  
  
For his part, Neville intended to play very well. As long as he was playing on Ginny’s side, he had every reason to do his best.  
  
Unfortunately, Trevor did not cooperate. He kept jumping away and hiding in the furthest reaches of the compartment. Sometimes Ginny and Luna helped Neville look for him, and sometimes he managed it alone, but all those interruptions did nothing for Neville’s game.  
  
“Perhaps you ought to change his diet,” said Luna during one such interruption. “Give him something to make him calmer. Bertie Botts makes a lovely wine-flavored jelly bean, and I would guess that it’s just the right dose for a toad.”  
  
“Get him drunk?” said Neville as he burst out laughing. Leave it to Luna to come up with something so ridiculous. He spotted Trevor, grabbed him with both hands, and returned to his seat again, only to find Luna staring right at him with hurt in her eyes.  
  
“Do not laugh at me,” she said darkly.  
  
“I’m sorry,” mumbled Neville.  
  
“It’s quite all right,” she returned with dignity, though she still seemed miffed.  
  
Meanwhile, Gi"nny was giving Michael meaningful looks warning him not to laugh either. He did not, and that redeemed him in Ginny’s eyes. To Neville, it seemed very unfair. Michael had done much more than laugh; he’d actually insulted Luna. Why didn’t Luna take offense at _that_? Why did she have to make him look bad in front of Ginny? And getting Trevor drunk _was_ a ridiculous idea. Anyone would laugh at it.  
  
Neville’s concentration was shot, and the Gryffindors lost the game. Ginny did not seem to care, however, and she and Michael left the compartment happily holding hands. As much as Neville knew he didn’t stand a chance with Ginny, he couldn’t help feeling jealous.  
  
And perhaps he might have gone on wallowing in self-pity for days afterward, but reality brought him back to his senses. Only two days into the school term, the news broke. Bellatrix Lestrange, his parents’ main torturer, had escaped from Azkaban. Suddenly all his worries about Ginny disappeared. Only one thing could matter as long as a maniac like Lestrange was at large. The war was on, and he was going to be ready for it.


	21. Chapter 21

Luna learned from her father never to spend even a knut of her pocket money on _The Daily Prophet_ but she read discarded copies whenever she could. Dad said it was important to know what the competition was saying, especially for the important stories, so she made certain to read _The Prophet_ 's version of the Azkaban mass break-out as well as the mysterious death of the Unspeakable wizard Bode. Of course, their interpretations were completely wrong. Bode’s death was made out to be a freakish accident. Nobody even suggested murder, though anyone with sense knew that dark wizards targeted Unspeakables. But the grossest misinformation by far was the claim that the escaped Death Eaters had rallied around Sirius Black, and not Voldemort.  
  
“That’s the most dangerous lie they’ve printed yet,” she thought. “Their poor, gullible readers don’t be properly prepared to defend themselves.” But misleading as it was, she intended to continue following _The Prophet_ 's coverage. These stories were too important to ignore.  
  
Much to her surprise, her fellow students seemed to agree. People who normally subscribed to the paper but ignored were now reading and keeping it. Discarded copies became harder and harder to come by. The hallways were abuzz with fearful talk, and at long last, people were beginning to take Harry Potter seriously. Luna always knew they would eventually. Truth wills out. But it was unfortunate that it had to take ten escaped Death Eaters to make it happen.  
  
Poor Neville was taking the news harder than anybody. He didn’t speak to Luna at D.A. meetings anymore, nor to anyone else. He didn’t even sneak peeks at Ginny the way he used to. He had his mind on one thing and one thing only: mastering every defensive spell Harry taught. Luna admired him more than ever, but she missed his company.  
  
Surprisingly, it was Hermione Granger who gave her something to keep her busy and happy. She was sitting in the library one day, working on her Runes homework, when Hermione took a seat across from her.  
  
“Hello,” said Luna.  
  
“Hi,” said Hermione. She fidgeted as though uncertain of what to say. It was not like her. Her eyes darted around and then rested on Luna’s stack of text books.  
  
“I didn’t know you took Runes,” she said.  
  
“Of course I do,” said Luna.  
  
“And you’ve got all of Sophie Rockrimmon’s books! I’ve been waiting for those for ages!”  
  
“I’m sorry,” said Luna. “We have copies at home, you know, but Dad doesn’t want me to bring them to school. She’s my favorite writer of course, but I’ll return these so you can take them out. It would be the right thing to do, actually.”  
  
“It’s fine,” said Hermione quickly. Small talk was over; now she was ready to get down to whatever business was on her mind. “Listen, Luna, I’ve got an idea for _The Quibbler_.”  
  
Luna sat up attentively. Hermione had broken the code at last!  
  
“Which article was it?” she asked, excitedly. “The recent Snorkack sighting or the chicken-swapping scandal?”  
  
“Um, well, I don’t actually read _The Quibbler_ ,” said Hermione, looking self-conscious again. “But I did think that after all the rubbish we’ve been seeing about Harry in _The Prophet_ ,” perhaps some other paper would be interested in his side of the story.”  
  
“Well, yes, Daddy would certainly be interested,” said Luna.  
  
‘Interested’ didn’t quite cover it. Dad would jump at the chance to interview Harry Potter. He’d been begging Professor Dumbledore ever since Harry re-entered the wizarding world, but Dumbledore was extremely protective of him. A suggestion from Hermione was different, though. She was one of his best friends, and that must mean she knew that he was willing.  
  
“Then I say we should all meet at the next Hogsmeade outing,” said Hermione. “I’ve already written to Rita Skeeter to do the interview.”  
  
“Rita Skeeter? She’s not one of our reporters.”  
  
“Yes, I know,” said Hermione.  
  
“And I rather doubt she’s capable of writing in _The Quibbler_ 's standard style. Perhaps my Dad ought to do the interview.”  
  
“No!” cried Hermione so loudly that Madam Pince shook a scolding finger at her. Lowering her voice, she said, “What I mean to say is, please, Luna, let’s do this my way.”  
  
“If you insist,” said Luna, knowing it would be Hermione’s way or no way. “I’ll write to Dad tonight.”  
  
Her Dad was predictably thrilled, so the meeting was set. Rita Skeeter proved to be as nasty and mercenary in person as she was in print. Luna was not at all surprised when Hermione told her that she had been resorting to illegal measures to get sources. Shocked perhaps, but not surprised.  
  
But Luna had to admit that Rita Skeeter had a nose for news. She asked pointed questions, pressed for details, and really got Harry talking. As an interviewer, she was nearly as professional as Dad, though of course, not even a fraction as noble.  
  
For his part, Harry came off shiningly well. Luna could see that it was hard for him to speak so openly about what he had witnessed, just as it had been hard for her to describe her mother’s death. But it was equally clear that Harry was giving his all so that the truth would come out. He was so  
much in line with _The Quibbler_ 's mission, it was hard for Luna to believe that both he and Hermione were still unaware of it.  
  
When the interview was finally published, it took Hogwarts by storm. Within hours, every student in school had read it and everywhere Luna went, she overheard people talking about it. Harry had won their respect, and people were treating her better, too. With the exception of Draco Malfoy and  
his friends, people stopped calling her ‘Loony.’ And as the after effects of the article stretched into weeks, Luna felt her life at Hogwarts was close to perfect. The only thing missing was Neville.  
  
Then another astounding thing happened - not as good as being around Neville - but definitely thrilling. A centaur became the new Divination professor. From the moment he stepped into the castle, dazzling the school and dumfounding Umbridge, Luna knew she was in for the opportunity of a  
lifetime. Dozens of questions raced to her mind. First and foremost, she wanted to know if he was the same centaur who’d spoken to her mother.  
  
The answer to that question came in her very first class with him when he said, “It was foretold that we would meet, daughter of Rowena."  
  
But being singled out by the new professor meant the end of her brief respite from unpopularity. When she returned to the dorm that night, her roommates were carrying on a conversation about her as though she weren’t there.  
  
“Well, well, the daughter of Rowena has arrived,” said Kali, the most forceful of the three. “What makes her the ‘daughter of Rowena’ more than any of us, I’ll never understand.”  
  
“My mother was named Rowena,” said Luna.  
  
The girls ignored her and continued talking amongst themselves.  
  
“Parvati Patil said he knew Harry Potter’s name,” said Grendelle.  
  
“Who doesn’t?” spat Kali.  
  
Luna sat down on her bed and began emptying out her pockets. She pulled out her D.A. galleon and looked at it long and hard. “Call a meeting, Harry. Please,” she thought.  
  
“It must be because Trelawney used to give her such high marks,” said Braunoza.  
  
“Only because she makes stuff up better than the rest of us. She probably copied her assignments from that rubbish in her father’s magazine.”  
  
That made Luna angry. “I do not cheat,” she said, jumping up.  
  
“Prove it!” said Kali, leaping to her feet, too. She took a small crystal ball off her shelves, walked over to Luna, and twirling it before her, said, “Trelawney let me borrow this so I could keep practicing, seeing as all we’ll be doing with Firenze is astrology.”  
  
“Professor Firenze,” corrected Luna.  
  
“ _Excuse me_ ,” said Kali acidly. “Anyway, let’s see if you’re for real or not. _Professor_ Firenze will find out soon enough.” She dropped the crystal ball into Luna’s hands.  
  
Braunoza ran to the door. “Hey everybody! Rowena’s looniest daughter is going to give us a séance!”  
  
And before Luna had a chance to protest, every Ravenclaw girl between third and seventh years crowded into their dorm room.  
  
“This is just what Umbridge did to Professor Trelawney,” she thought. “But I will not let them fluster me.”  
  
She sat back down on her bed, looked around at all the faces in the room, and then stared into it the crystal ball. After a few minutes, a vision came to her.  
  
“Disfigurement,” she said.  
  
“That’s not a prediction,” said Kali. “Name some names.”  
  
Luna pondered the image in the crystal ball. The girl in it was hiding herself behind a scarf. But the curly hair told all.  
  
“Marietta Edgecombe,” said Luna. “She’ll be made so hideous, she’ll be ashamed to show her face.”  
  
“If you can’t say anything nice, Loony, don’t say anything at all!” cried Marietta.  
  
A strong sense of foreboding came over Luna. “Heed your own advice,” she replied. “We always have the power to change our own fate.”  
  
“Oh, please. Enough of this rubbish,” said Marietta. She stormed out of the room and Cho followed her.  
  
“Do me!” said a third-year.  
  
“No, me!” said another.  
  
Luna again fixed her eyes on the crystal ball. She didn’t see either of the two third-years. She saw herself. Then several members of the D.A. appeared in the glass, and then Umbridge, towering over them menacingly. They had been caught!  
  
“Remain calm. You must not panic,” said Luna to the image.  
  
“Who musn’t panic?” said one of the third years.  
  
“Not you,” said Luna, looking up. She knew she could not explain what she had seen to any of them. They were not part of the D.A. “I think I’ve seen enough for one night,” said Luna.  
  
“Of course you have,” said Kali sarcastically.  
  
“Perhaps you should give it a try yourself,” said Luna, handing back the crystal ball. “Professor Trelawney loaned it to you for practice, after all.”  
  
“Fine,” said Kali, sitting down with the ball. She stared into it, and after a brief pause, she announced, “Michael Corner will ditch Ginny Weasley for Padma Patil.”  
  
“Really?” squealed Padma.  
  
“You can double-check with ‘the daughter of Rowena’ if you like,” said Kali.  
  
“I don’t really understand much about boys,” said Luna.  
  
“No kidding,” someone mumbled.  
  
“What’s the point of taking Divination then?” said one of the third years.  
  
“Yeah, let’s have some more love predictions, Kali. Who’ll get Roger Davies next?”  
  
Luna lost interest in their conversation after that, and she slipped out of the the room unnoticed. She headed up to the Astronomy Tower to review the star patterns Professor Firenze had shown them in class. Every now and then, she checked on her galleon.  
  
Luna’s prediction about Marietta came true two months later, but by that time, Marietta and Cho were the only ones who remembered it, and they immediately accused her of being in cahoots with Hermione Granger. It was as absurd a conspiracy theory as Fudge’s fears about Professor Dumbledore, but Cho and Marietta believed it, and it cost Luna Cho’s friendship. That hurt, but the end of the D.A. hurt more. Luna was puzzled that it turned out so differently than her vision. Harry Potter had been the only one to confront Umbridge; everyone else escaped. That meant either that her vision was wrong  
or that some worse confrontation with Umbridge was yet to come. If it did, Luna knew to remain calm.  
  
The lack of meetings was unbearable. For months, Luna had had a place to go and people to see, just like everyone else in school. It was all over now. And because she’d had that brief taste of friendship, she knew what she was missing. Without the D.A., Luna’s loneliness was fiercer than ever.


	22. Chapter 22

One late afternoon about a week before the end of school, Luna was seized with a feeling that something momentous was about to happen. She knew that Neville was sitting for the last of his O.W.L.s, so she worried that he might be having a rough time of it, but the feeling was so strong, it seemed like something more important than bad exam results.  
  
She bounced out of her seat to the nearest window. Leaning her head out, she studied the clouds are far as her eyes could see. Professor Firenze had just begun teaching hygromancy, and though Luna was just a beginner, she was quite sure that the thickness of the clouds on that otherwise summery day signified danger.  
  
“I must remain calm,” she told herself as she headed toward Professor Firenze’s office for corroboration. But before she got there, she ran into Ginny.  
  
“Something terrible might happen today,” she told her.  
  
“Have you heard something from your Dad?” Ginny had great respect for Dad ever since _The Quibbler_ ’s discreet coverage of how Voldemort had possessed her.  
  
“It was a premonition, actually,” said Luna, and she described the cloud formations and her interpretations. “I was hoping to find Professor Firenze to make certain.”  
  
Ginny shook her head. “We don’t have time for that. We’ve got to find Harry, Ron, and Hermione. They might need our help.” She turned and ran toward the classrooms.  
  
“We must remain calm,” Luna called, following close behind.  
  
Ginny led her through the corridors for a while, and then, she pointed to one room in particular.  
  
“A premonition?” asked Luna.  
  
"No, I can hear Harry’s voice,” said Ginny smiling.  
  
And as they got closer, Luna heard it also. There was quite an argument going on. They had arrived not a moment too soon. Hermione was agitated and Harry was altogether rude. They were also being carelessly loud, bandying about names of people and places that were meant to be secret. Luna tried to get everyone to say “Stubby Boardman” instead, but evidently, the feeling of urgency was overpowering them.  
  
Luna and Ginny were given the job of standing guard. It all went very well in the beginning. Whenever any students passed by, Luna would say “garroting gas,” and without fail, the students would nod to each other knowingly and leave. Ginny had to do a bit more talking to convince people, but she too steered dozens of students away. Just when they were congratulating themselves on a perfectly empty hallway, the Inquisitorial Squad showed up.  
  
It was then that Ginny forgot to remain calm. Her brother was already caught, gagged, and being pushed along by a Slytherin boy. Ginny whipped out her wand immediately. Unfortunately, Malfoy anticipated her.  
  
“Expelliarmus!” he cried.  
  
“Accio Loony’s!” said another boy. Luna felt her wand slide out from behind her ear. She grabbed helplessly at it as it floated out of her reach.  
  
"Grab them!” yelled Umbridge, passing them by and storming toward her office.  
  
The Inquisitorial Squad complied. The boy who had Luna’s wand seized her roughly. She did not resist. Ginny, however, was kicking and struggling against a girl much bigger than herself. And then, to Luna’s surprise, Neville came running up and jumped into the fray, set on defending Ginny. He almost had her released when Crabbe, the biggest and strongest of the boys, got him in a choke hold. Luna nearly lost her calm at the sight of it, but she knew that the only way out of this was to keep her wits about her, so she controlled herself.  
  
“They may have brawn, but we have brains,” she thought.  
  
The Inquisitorial Squad gagged them and pushed them into Umbridge’s office where another big girl had pinned Hermione against a wall. Umbridge had Harry. Luna remembered the whole scene from the crystal ball. She kept her eyes on the clouds outside, hoping for some sign of change.  
  
“Don’t panic. Remain calm,” she thought over and over again. She wished some of the others would pick up on her thoughts, but none of them seemed to, at least not at first. Umbrdige sent for Professor Snape, who got Crabbe to loosen his grip on Neville, for which Luna was grateful. And after a long while with lots of shouting back and forth, Hermione came up with a code about a secret weapon. What she meant by it precisely, Luna did not know, but it was certainly effective. She lured Umbridge away, taking Harry with her. The Inquisitorial Squad was left in charge.  
  
“Well, well,” said Malfoy, assuming the position of boss and stepping up to the front of the room. He twirled the wands he’d taken. “Looks like I’ve got you losers exactly where I want you.”  
  
Both Ginny and Ron shouted swear words through their gags.  
  
“Dear, dear, such language! But, what do you expect from riff raff like the Weasleys?”  
  
“Don’t panic. Remain calm,” thought Luna.  
  
Neither Ron nor Ginny spoke again, but they glared at Malfoy venomously.  
  
“Eh, the Weasleys are boring.” said Malfoy. “Let’s have a little comedy instead, shall we? Untie her gag, Rivers.”  
  
The boy holding Luna untied her gag.  
  
“So what do you say, Loony?” said Malfoy. “Longbottom’s quite the knight in shining armor - for Weasley, that is. What does it feel like, for a weirdo like you, to get ditched?”  
  
“I’ve developed immunity to that particular nargle,” answered Luna.  
  
The Inquisitorial Squad burst into long and hard belly laughs. “And there you have it, folks,” said Malfoy, wiping his eyes. “A star soldier in Dumbledore’s Army!”  
  
They kept on laughing. But now that they’d let their guard down, the members of the D.A. knew it was time to put their training into action. Ginny bit her captor, and though she got a few scratches in return, she’d freed herself. Ron struggled free from Warrington, and ran head on into Malfoy, grabbing all the wands he had. Ginny dove for hers and caught it as though it were the Snitch. Then she turned it on a cowering Malfoy.  
  
Luna had an easy escape. Because she had made no resistance until now, Rivers’ hold on her was very loose. She pulled out of his limp grasp and snatched back her own wand. But Neville was having a much harder time throwing off Crabbe.  
  
“Stupefy!” cried Luna, pointing her wand at the brute.  
  
Crabbe fell to the floor, and Neville pounced on his unconscious body, retrieving his own wand. Then he jumped into battle.  
  
“Impedimentia!” he shouted, so that Millicent Bulstrode and Warrington tripped over each other, with Millicent in her great heft on top.  
  
“Expelliarmus!” cried Luna, disarming the girl who’d been holding Ginny.  
  
“Stupefy!” yelled Ron, felling her a second later.  
  
A few more Stunners took care of the Inquisitorial Squad. Only Malfoy remained.  
  
“Got ‘em all?” asked Ginny, tossing her fiery head as she surveyed the room. “Good.”  
  
And then, with a wicked grin at Malfoy, she cast a Bat Bogey hex that left him whimpering for his mother.  
  
Everyone paused to admire it. “Bloody brilliant!” said Ron. “That was better than the time you caught George peeking at – ”  
  
Ginny turned and pointed her wand toward him. He stopped talking. They all ran outside.  
  
“Where d’you suppose they went?” asked Neville when they reached the door of the castle.  
  
Luna looked up at the sky. The sun was setting. “The clouds are thickest over the forest,” she said.  
  
“Yeah, look!” said Ginny pointing to some figures near the forest’s edge. “They’re going in there now.” She sprinted forward, and everyone followed. When they finally reached the forest, there was a terrifying pounding of hooves and footsteps. Luna wondered if it was Professor Firenze’s herd.  
  
“That way,” said Ginny, following the noise.  
  
“Wands out,” Neville reminded them.  
  
After a while, the noise seemed to die down, as though the herd had ridden far away. All four listened closely. “I hear Harry!” said Ron and Ginny at the same time.  
  
And indeed Harry and Hermione were still arguing about getting to the Department of Mysteries. Ron announced himself first, and so Ginny, Neville, and Luna followed. Soon the argument about the Department of Mysteries gained a few more sides. Harry and Ron were dead set against anyone’s going except themselves and Hermione. Ginny argued for herself. But Neville spoke best of all, invoking the mission of the D.A. Luna was proud of him. He wore them down. And she was glad to go for her own sake. Of course she wanted to stand up against injustice, but she also had a deep curiosity about the Department of Mysteries. And as it turned out, they needed her. She was the only one with experience riding thestrals.  
  
The Department of Mysteries was nothing like Luna had imagined it. It was a long, dark hallway full of doors. She made certain to speak in code down there, though nobody else picked up on it. And then they reached the thing Luna had always wanted to see: the portal.  
  
She knew what it was not because of its looks, but because of the feelings it gave her. She felt warm and loved all over and she heard the whisperings of her mother and grandmother on the other side.  
  
“Sweetie, we’re so proud of you,” they seemed to say.  
  
She stood enjoying their presence for as long as she could, which was quite a while because Harry was doing the same. Of course, Luna couldn’t hear Harry’s family, but she knew by the look on his face that they were there.  
  
Finally, Hermione, who’d probably never lost a loved one, coaxed Harry into leaving. Luna was sorry to go, but she knew it wasn’t really a goodbye.  
  
They resumed checking all the doors. There was one which was impervious to all charms, even to the magical knife Harry was using, so Luna knew it must be part of what the portal led to. Excitedly, she began to explain, but nobody had the patience to listen. And as they were there on a rescue mission, Luna let the matter drop.  
  
Harry led them further and further. They passed all sorts of fascinating things, but there wasn’t time to view any of them. Finally they stopped at a glass sphere with Harry’s name on it. And Luna knew just as all of them did that the glass sphere was the reason they were there.  
  
Against the warnings of the others, Harry touched it. As soon as he did, the Death Eaters appeared. Luna was terrified. This was not the Inquisitorial Squad. These people had gone to jail for torture and murder. When they threatened Ginny, they meant it. Everyone closed in around her and waited for Harry to give the commands.  
  
“NOW!” shouted Harry.  
  
“Stupefy!” cried Luna. The others had shouted hexes, too. As far as Luna could tell, none of them hit.  
  
“RUN!” shouted Harry, and Luna obeyed. She, Ginny, and Ron dashed down the corridor into the first door that would open. The moment they entered, their feet left the ground. They were floating.  
  
“What _is_ this place?” asked Ginny.  
  
“It’s rather like Professor Firenze’s classroom,” said Luna, pointing to models of the planets and stars. “But it’s an even closer simulation. There’s no gravity.”  
  
“So what’ll we do now?” asked Ron. “Just float around until – AARGH!” he cried as four Death Eaters burst through the door, each cursing him with a different spell. He was completely useless for battle after that. He floated around the planets, giggling and yelling, “WHEEEEEE!”  
  
“Stupefy!” yelled Ginny at one of the Death Eaters, but the crimson light of her wand seemed to go awry.  
  
The Death Eaters were having similar trouble aiming their spells.  
  
“It’s the g-d-mn room!” one of them said. With his spell-casting impaired, he opted for brute force and grabbed onto Ginny’s leg. There was a loud crack and Ginny screamed.  
  
“Reducto!” yelled Luna, pointing her wand at the model of Jupiter. Pluto exploded in the Death Eater’s face instead. It was a smaller planet than Luna had intended, but it did damage. The Death Eater let go of Ginny and howled in pain.  
  
“Let’s go,” said another. “Two out of three down, and this one’s not worth the risk. Potter’s the real prize.”  
  
“Yeah, get us out of here, Rookwood.”  
  
Rookwood held onto the door handle and did some complex wand gestures over it. Luna and Ginny watched carefully. In a sort of human chain, the Death Eaters pulled themselves out of the room. When they were gone, Ginny grabbed onto the door handle just like Rookwood. “I think I got that. Did you?”  
  
“Yes,” said Luna. “Are you all right?”  
  
Ginny shrugged. “C’mon, Ron, we’re leaving,” she called.  
  
“Awww, but I like it here!” said Ron, as the lack of gravity carried him around the models of the stars and planets. He darted around Mercury, called out, "WEASLEY SAVES!" and then began the chorus of “Weasley is Our King.”  
  
“Let me try,” said Luna, allowing herself to float toward him.  
  
“Loony Loony Lovegood,” he sang as Luna grabbed his wrist.  
  
“Hurry! I’ve almost got it!” said Ginny. And just as Luna pulled Ron over to Ginny, the door opened and all three fell out in a pile beside Harry Potter.  
  
Once they were back on the ground again, it was clear that Ginny was in no more shape for battle than her brother. Luna had to support her everywhere they went. Luna settled her safely into a corner, and then she, Harry, and Neville raced around the corridor, sealing up rooms. The next thing she knew, she was lying on a cold floor near Ginny and Ron.  
  
“What happened?” she asked.  
  
“One of the Death Eaters knocked you out,” said Ginny. “And the Order got here. They’re taking care of things now.”  
  
Luna sat up. Hermione, lying unconscious, was with them too. Only Harry and Neville were missing. They were still in battle, no doubt. Luna tried to beam cheerful thoughts at them, but it wasn’t easy. There was a feeling of grimness all around them.  
  
“Luna,” said Ginny, cautiously. “What was behind that archway?”  
  
“Did you hear the people there?”  
  
Ginny nodded. “The funny thing is, I heard them once before . . . in the Chamber of Secrets when I was nearly . . .”  
  
“That makes sense, actually,” said Luna.  
  
“You mean,” said Ginny, her eyes growing wide, “that’s where people go when they – ?”  
  
“It’s an entry-way. It’s just the beginning. There’s much, much more, I am told.”  
  
Ginny leaned her head against the wall. “So Harry must have heard his parents. No wonder he looked like he was going to try to go through.”  
  
“If a person goes through, then he – Oh, Neville!” cried Luna as he and Professor Lupin walked in. Neville’s nose was gushing blood.  
  
“Id looks worse thad id is,” said Neville.  
  
“What happened to everyone?” asked Ginny.  
  
Professor Lupin sighed heavily. “Sirius passed. Harry’s with Dumbledore.”  
  
Ginny immediately burst into tears.  
  
Professor Lupin wiped a few from his own eyes and said, “I’m taking you back to school.”  
  
“We came by thestral,” Luna told him.  
  
Professor Lupin nodded. “We saw them outside.”  
  
"Hey, it’s our good friend the werewolf! All right, Lupin!”  
  
“Shut up, Ron!” hissed Ginny.  
  
“It’s all right. He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” said Professor Lupin. Pointing his wand at Ron, he said, “Sonumbulus!” Ron slumped down into a snoring heap on the floor.  
  
“Neville, Luna, can you help Ginny?”  
  
“Yes,” they both said at once.  
  
“Good.” He conjured up two stretchers for Ron and Hermione and levitated them to the thestrals. Luna and Neville each took one of Ginny’s arms as she hobbled along.  
  
“Harry will blame himself,” she whispered through choked sobs. “Sirius was godfather. They _loved_ each other.”  
  
Luna and Neville hoisted Ginny onto her thestral while Professor Lupin cast adhesive spells to secure Ron and Hermione onto theirs. Then the three of them mounted, too, and Professor Lupin said, “To Hogwarts.”  
  
The castle was dark and silent when they arrived. Professor Lupin helped bring Ron and Hermione up to the hospital wing. As soon as they were in beds, he left. Madam Pomfrey healed Neville’s and Ginny’s wounds in seconds and gave them beds, too. Even Luna got a bed, though she was uninjured.  
  
“It’s late, and you all need your rest,” said Madam Pomfrey, pulling a curtain around herself and Hermione.  
  
Ginny cried herself to sleep, and Neville drifted off soon afterward. Luna sat up in her bed, looking around. As much as her first real battle had shaken her, as much as she knew that when everyone awoke, they’d all be grieving, she couldn’t think of anyplace she’d rather be. At long last, she was in a room full of friends.  
  
She sang the quill’s song so that they’d all feel better.  
  
“You’ve got a very pretty voice,” said Madam Pomfrey from behind the curtain.  
  
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Luna, and she settled in to sleep.  
  



	23. Chapter 23

The end-of-the-year feast was in full swing when Luna walked into the Great Hall. Students were milling around out of their seats, eating, talking, and laughing. A few people froze in mid-conversation, pointed at Luna, and then resumed speaking, casting her furtive glances the whole time. Luna was used to whispers and stares, but this was much more than usual.  
  
Ginny waved to her from the Gryffindor table, then her red head came bobbing through the crowd. “You missed Dumbledore’s speech!”  
  
“Professor Dumbledore’s speech,” said Luna.  
  
“ _Professor_ Dumbledore,” said Ginny. “He told everybody what we did in the Department of Mysteries, and we got fifty points each. Then he pulled out the original D.A. list and awarded ten more points to every single member for inter-house friendship.”  
  
“Even Marietta?” asked Luna.  
  
“Yeah, even her,” said Ginny, with a grimace. “But she got her just deserts. I thought she’d dive under the table with the whole school looking at her in that stupid scarf. So where were you?”  
  
“I was talking to Harry, actually.”  
  
Ginny’s eyes widened. “About Sirius?”  
  
“Yes. He’s still not feeling up to the feast, but I think he’s a bit better now.”  
  
Ginny seized her into a hug. “You’ve done what nobody else could! He wouldn’t open up to Ron or Hermione for _anything_.”  
  
Ginny held onto her a long time. More people pointed and stared, but Ginny ignored them. She only let go when she saw Dean Thomas signaling to her.  
  
“I’ll talk to you later, Luna. Maybe on the train home.”  
  
“That would be very nice.”  
  
But nice as it would have been, something even nicer happened. Somehow, without any prior planning, she and Neville gravitated to each other with a mutual understanding that they’d sit together.  
  
“Have a good summer, Nev,” said some sixth year Gryffindors as they passed. One of them clapped him on the back.  
  
“Umm . . . you, too,” said Neville, a little bewildered. To Luna he whispered, “Those guys haven’t spoken to me once in my whole five years here.” When they settled into a compartment, Neville asked, “Are the Ravenclaws treating you any better because of all this?”  
  
“Yes,” said Luna, decidedly. “Nobody called me ‘Loony’ at all last night, and some people even returned my missing things. They didn’t really need to, you know. My things always turn up in the end.”  
  
“Oh,” said Neville.  
  
Luna grinned. It was so good to talk to Neville alone again!  
  
“Well, even if the students know what we’ve done, the world still doesn’t. _The Prophet_ called us ‘Harry Potter’s friends.’”  
  
“ _The Prophet_ omits important information rather often, actually.”  
  
“Yeah, I know, but what worries me is that sooner or later, they will find out. Then they’ll send reporters around, and my Gran’s gonna _hate_ that.”  
  
“I don’t suppose my Dad would take well to _The Prophet_ ’s reporters either. Selling Harry’s interview was one thing, but . . .” She giggled to herself, imagining her Dad running off potential interviewers by speaking in intricate code. Dad was so talented.  
  
“Umm, Luna, I want to tell you something. It’s sort of a secret. It’s about my Mum and Dad.”  
  
Luna sat up and grew serious. Neville was going to confide in her at last.  
  
“My parents were Aurors. They fought You-Know-Who at the height of his power, and they kept looking for him after he disappeared. Even when the rest of the world thought they could live in peace, Mum and Dad were still looking.”  
  
Luna knew she had to pretend that she didn’t know any of this. “They sound like heroes,” she said.  
  
“They were . . . I mean, are. They’re still alive. They . . .”  
  
Luna waited patiently as Neville gathered his thoughts.  
  
“You see, nobody knows exactly what they found, but they must have gotten very close to You-Know-Who because four Death Eaters tracked them down and . . . and . . . tortured them with the Cruciatus Curse.”  
  
“That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard,” said Luna. It was the truth. Her mother’s death was the most horrible thing she had ever seen, which was different.  
  
Neville nodded. “They didn’t give the Death Eaters the information they wanted, so the Death Eaters did stuff to their tongues so that they could never speak again. They’ll never do magic again either. They’re . . .they’re on the closed ward at St. Mungo’s. Do you know what that means?”  
  
“It means they’re insane,” said Luna.  
  
For a brief moment, Neville seemed to puff up in anger, but then he just mumbled, “Yeah.”  
  
“But perhaps not,” said Luna. “Healers make mistakes, too, you know.”  
  
Neville sat up hopefully. “I knew you’d . . . I mean, the things you say sometimes, I thought maybe . . . Do you suppose there’s some way to reach them, some way the Healers don’t know about?”  
  
Luna swallowed hard as she realized why Neville was asking her this. Just like everyone else, he believed she was mad. The only difference was that he thought her madness might be able to help him understand his parents better. Luna almost gave into resentment, but she could not forget what Professor Dumbledore had told her all those months ago in the Great Hall: that she was Neville’s ideal confidante. She had helped Harry Potter cope with his loss, and to a lesser extent, she'd helped Cho Chang. Perhaps this was similar.  
  
“Did you know that people say that hearing voices is a sign of insanity?”  
  
“Yes,” said Neville, uncertainly.  
  
“But you heard voices by the archway in the Department of Mysteries, didn’t you?”  
  
“Well, that’s different. That’s the doorway to -”  
  
“Oh, so you know what that is. I had to explain it to Ginny and Harry.”  
  
Neville shrugged. “My Gran told me a little when my Grandad died. And then, you sort of pick things up when you’ve visited St. Mungo’s as much as I have.”  
  
“Yes, I suppose you would,” said Luna. “And I suppose you know that Ginny nearly died in our first year.”  
  
“I heard a little about it, yeah.”  
  
“You see, you’re not the only one who has private information they don’t want spread around school.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess,” said Neville. Apparently, he had never considered that other “cooler” people might have skeletons in their closets, too.  
  
“Well, Ginny told me about the voices she heard at the archway, ” Luna pressed on. “And to her, they sounded like what she heard when she was close to death herself.”  
  
Neville nodded, but Luna could see he was confused and too polite to say so.  
  
“Now, I’m no expert, of course, but I would guess that when a person is incapacitated the way your parents are, their minds go to a different sort of place, too, not the same as where departed souls go, but perhaps something like it.”  
  
Neville’s face was a mixture of hope and doubt, just like Harry’s had been.  
  
“What you say makes sense,” he said hesitantly.  
  
“Of course it does.” Seeing that he might need it, Luna began to hum the lady’s song. When it seemed to have worked its magic, she said, “Would you like to play Exploding Snap, or will it disturb Trevor?”  
  
“No, it’s fine,” said Neville gratefully. Luna saw that he coped with these conversations much in the same way he rode thestrals. Even though he knew he had nothing to fear, he still preferred his familiar, solid world.  
  
After about half an hour with the only noise coming from the cards, Neville said, “I had a taste of what my parents went through, you know. Bellatrix Lestrange – she was the head of the bunch that tortured them – did Cruciatus on me.”  
  
Luna gasped.  
  
“It was only a few seconds, really. Nothing compared to what my parents went through. And even that felt -” Neville paused and shuddered. Then, with some pride in his voice, he added, “I was ready to take more. Harry was willing to give up the prophecy way too easily.”  
  
“He did it for your sake,” said Luna. “And frankly, I’m glad.”  
  
“Yeah, well, me and my clumsy legs destroyed it anyway. What a way to be a hero. Just one more way for Gran to remind me that I’m not Dad.”  
  
“But you _are_ a hero. Deep down, you know it yourself.”  
  
Not one to boast, Neville smiled and said, “I’m not much of a fighter, really. Harry did most of it. I was carrying Hermione. She must have thanked me for it a hundred times in the last few days, but anyone would have done it. I’ll tell you one thing, though, if we’re going to keep this up, we ought to learn some basic healing spells.”  
  
“I was thinking the very same thing when Ginny was hurt. We ought to suggest it to Harry for the D.A. next year.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Neville as he played his next card. It exploded so loudly that Trevor jumped out of sight.  
  
“Oh, Trevor, you’ve been so good till now,” he sighed. The two of them ducked under the seats. Trevor escaped their grasp every time.  
  
“I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” said Neville.  
  
“Here, Trevor, Trevor,” called Luna.  
  
While they were still on their hands and knees, Malfoy and his two thuggish friends walked into their compartment.  
  
“So you two losers think you’re all that – running with _heroic_ Harry Potter. Let’s see if you can stand up for yourselves without him.”  
  
“Protego!” shouted Neville as he and Luna leapt to their feet. But the shield charm was unnecessary. Malfoy and his friends hadn’t even drawn their wands. It was all a big bluff. But nonetheless, Padma, Parvati, and Neville’ roommate Seamus suddenly appeared at their door.  
  
“Look at that, back-up has arrived. Suddenly you two weirdos are popular. But it won’t last. You’ll see.”  
  
“No, I don’t suppose it will last,” Luna agreed. “But even so, I’d rather be in my place than yours.”  
  
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Draco, taking a step toward her. Neville inched toward her, too.  
  
Luna knew that Draco would fly off the handle if she made direct reference to his father.  
  
“Well, I can’t help but feel sorry for you. Chronic bizzyanitis can’t be an easy condition to live with. I read all about it in the most recent _Quibbler_. You show all the symptoms, actually.”  
  
“Delightful personality, isn’t she?” drawled Malfoy with a backward glance at the Patil twins. “Just the sort you want to be seen with.”  
  
Suddenly, without warning, Trevor croaked loudly and jumped into Luna’s hands.  
  
“Oooh, I caught him!” she cried. She passed him to Neville proudly.  
  
“Thanks,” he mumbled.  
  
“Come sit with us, Nev,” said Seamus.  
  
“That all right with you, Luna?” asked Neville.  
  
Luna stared at him, stricken. Surely he wouldn’t abandon her now after all they had shared?  
  
“Get your things, then,” he said, picking up his own bag. Throwing a defiant look at the others, he walked out of the compartment with Luna following.  
  
Luna didn’t care that Malfoy and his friends were sniggering. She didn’t care that the Patil twins were exchanging looks of apprehension. She didn’t even care that Neville had made sure to include her more out of principle than because he took pleasure in her company. The fact was that he had such principles, and that was why she liked him so much.


	24. Chapter 24

“For a Gryffindor, I sure am afraid of a lot of things,” Neville thought as he tugged at a particularly spunky garden gnome.  
  
The feverish publicity of his escapades at the Department of Mysteries had died down. For a little while at least, Gran had been proud of him. She had actually enjoyed speaking to the reporters and the fuss she made over Dad’s broken wand was mild for her standards. But now his O.W.L. results were due, and Gran had returned to her old self. Neville was spending as much time as possible in the garden, avoiding her.  
  
Gran was particularly fixated on his Transfiguration grade, but Neville’s the biggest worry by far was Potions. If he was going to accept Mr. Klover’s job offer, he needed that O.W.L. And if there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he didn’t want to repeat Potions. He didn’t think he could bear another year of Snape breathing down his neck, pointing out every little mistake. He’d be placed with the new fifth years – in Ginny’s class. Every humiliation Snape had ever heaped on him would seem like child’s play compared having it all happen in front of Ginny. He just had to have passed that O.W.L.  
  
“Gotcha!” Neville shouted as he caught hold of the gnome at last. Standing up, he put all his pent-up worry into throwing the little pest far away from the property. Neville’s throwing arm was getting stronger. He wished gnome-throwing would make him better at Quidditch.  
  
The owl came from the same direction in which the gnome had just flown. Neville, already damp from the garden work, broke out into a cold sweat. The owl swooped down to him, and with clammy hands and a pounding heart, he removed the envelope from its leg.  
  


ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVEL RESULTS

  
_Pass Grades_  
OUTSTANDING (O)  
EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS (E)  
ACCEPTABLE (A)  
  
 _Fail Grades_  
POOR (P)  
DREADFUL (D)  
TROLL (T)  
  


_Neville Franklin Longbottom has achieved:_

  
  
Astronomy . . . . . A  
Care of Magical Creatures . . . . A  
Charms . . . . . E  
Defense Against the Dark Arts . . . . . E  
Divination . . . . D  
Herbology . . . . . O  
History of Magic . . . . . A  
Potions . . . . . A  
Transfiguration . . . . . A  
  
Neville read and re-read his grades. Eight O.W.L.s! An O in Herbology, and E’s in Charms and Defense! And he’d passed Potions! He could hardly believe the grades were his. He ran down the list again.  
  
“Are those your exam results, Neville?” called Gran from inside the house. “Give them here.”  
  
Neville had no choice but to obey. He knew Gran would find fault with him for one reason or other, but he could face her better now that he’d seen his grades for himself. Out of suspense, he was out of his misery - or at least the worst of it.  
  
“It’s fair, I suppose, but not excellent,” said Gran as she looked over the parchment. “Your father got eleven O.W.L.s, all of them O’s.”  
  
Neville breathed deeply and held himself back from saying, “I’m not Dad.” He didn’t draw attention to his one ‘O’ either. As Uncle Algie had said, Gran disliked reminders of how much more he took after Mum than Dad.  
  
“I do hope Minerva will allow you into her N.E.W.T. class with nothing more than an ‘Acceptable.’”  
  
“I’ll be able to take Charms,” said Neville eagerly. “They cover healing spells at N.E.W.T. level. Very basic ones, of course, but - ”  
  
“Charms is a soft option. Every respectable wizard is a master at Transfiguration. Your father won the Transfiguration award at graduation, you know.”  
  
“Yes, Gran, I know. May I go back to the garden now? It’s the height of the season. I’ve got plenty to harvest. The Muggle basil is up to my knees and the jackaroo mint smells perfect.”  
  
“Yes, yes, boy, go.”  
  
Neville smiled to himself. Words of praise weren’t Gran’s style, but she did make extensive use of the herbs he grew for her. In its way, that was praise, too.  
  
A few days later was Neville’s birthday, a day they always spent visiting his parents. And since they were to be in London, it worked out to be the most convenient day for buying his replacement wand.  
  
Having “inherited” his father’s wand, Neville had never been in Ollivander’s store before, though he’d heard all about Dean and Seamus. Both of them described Ollivander as a slightly creepy man, but testing out all the wrong wands and then finding the right one had thrilled each of them. Of course, they were not even first years back then and had never done magic before. Dean had never even _seen_ magic before. Neville was certain that after having used a wand for five years, getting a new one wouldn’t be anything extraordinary. But he was wrong.  
  
“Good morning, Mrs. Longbottom,” said Mr. Ollivander when they entered the store. Neville instantly understood what Dean and Seamus had meant about Ollivander’s creepiness. How could anyone’s memory be so good? Gran probably hadn’t shopped there since Dad started school.  
  
“And this must be Neville. I’ve read about you in the papers, young man.”  
  
“Yes, showing some his father’s flair after all,” boasted Gran.  
  
Mr. Ollivander nodded but did not crack the smallest hint of a smile.  
  
“Whose side is he on?” wondered Neville.  
  
“Neville broke his wand in battle,” explained Gran. “And I must say, if we had to lose it at all, that was the best possible way. I would have been devastated had he misplaced it somewhere or broken it in a classroom mistake. It was Frank’s wand, you see.”  
  
Neville felt his face go warm. Of course, he’d heard Gran say all this before, but that was when they were alone. Now, in front of a complete stranger, she was parading his inadequacies.  
  
Mr. Ollivander looked at Gran steadily. “No two wizards are alike, madam, not even father and son. A wizard using somebody else’s wand can never reach his full potential.”  
  
“ _That’s_ why?” thought Neville. All these years, he believed himself to be a second-rate wizard. Perhaps it wasn’t true. Perhaps a new wand would make all the difference for him. His opinion of Mr. Ollivander sky-rocketed.  
  
Mr. Ollivander brought down several wands from the shelves, lined them up on the counter, and then brought out a cage of three white mice. Neither Seamus nor Dean had mentioned anything about mice.  
  
As though reading his thoughts, Mr. Ollivander said, “This is how adult wizards determine which wand is best for them.”  
  
“He’s sixteen, not seventeen,” said Gran.  
  
“I realize he’s still underage, madam, but he does have several years’ magical experience. Now, Neville, this is a twelve inch willow with a dragon heartstring core. Your father had birch and dragon heartstring, so this will feel familiar, but different. Cast any spell you like over these mice and we’ll see how it goes.”  
  
Neville decided to try transfiguring the mice into toads. He’d worked on small animals that very year, and though his results were always mixed, he felt he had reason to hope for better now. He closed his eyes, thought hard about Trevor, opened his eyes, and cast the spell.  
  
“Hmmm,” said Gran, frowning.  
  
One mouse now had green fur, one’s tongue had grown so long that it was hanging out of its mouth, and the last let out a weird noise that must have been a cross between a croak and a squeak.  
  
“Is Transfiguration your strongest subject?” asked Mr. Ollivander, returning the mice to their normal state.  
  
“No, sir. It’s Herbology, actually.”  
  
“It doesn’t require much wand work,” Gran added, but Neville was too jarred by his own choice of words to pay much mind. Since when was he tacking the word “actually” onto the ends of his sentences? He was beginning to sound like Luna Lovegood.  
  
“Cast a spell you’ve thoroughly mastered,” said Mr. Ollivander.  
Neville thought of the spells he’d learned in the D.A. He thought of Malfoy, face down and unconscious on the library desk. No, it seemed cruel to stun mice. He thought of Millicent Bulstrode tripping over Warrington. He grinned.  
  
“Impedimentia!” he said over the mice. The mice barely moved.  
  
“Do you normally get good results with the Impediment jinx?” asked Mr. Ollivander.  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“Then, try this,” he said as they traded wands. “Cherry wood and unicorn hair. Quite a few herbologists favor cherry wood.”  
  
The wand felt warm and comfortable in his hand. Holding Dad’s had never been anything like this. Might any of those A’s have been E’s and O’s with the right wand?  
  
“Impedimentia!” he said. The mice squealed as they bumped into each other. For a moment, he was elated, but then he felt a little sorry for the mice. “Aguamenti,” he said, refilling their water bottle.  
  
“Your wand has chosen you, young man,” said Mr. Ollivander. He smiled for the first time in the conversation.  
  
“Thank you very much, sir,” said Neville, offering his hand.  
  
Gran paid for the wand, and as Mr. Ollivander put it in a bag for them, another customer entered the store.  
  
“Dear, dear, it’s almost eleven o’clock,” said Mr. Ollivander. “I am sorry, sir, but I have an appointment outside very shortly. Could you return in perhaps two hours? I will be happy to assist you then.”  
  
Mr. Ollivander closed up shop, and Neville, Gran, and the other man left.  
  
“Nice man, Mr. Ollivander,” said Neville as they walked away.  
  
“His wands have an excellent reputation at any rate,” Gran sniffed. “Come, Neville, we’ll catch the Knight Bus to Mum and Dad.”  
  
Mere mention of the impending visit killed Neville’s good mood. While Gran complained about the driver’s erratic stops and starts, Neville tried cheering himself up with the good news he’d be delivering to Mr. Klover, but he couldn’t escape the thought of the familiar gloom that awaited him at the closed ward. Luna Lovegood’s words popped into his mind. _I’m no expert, of course, but I would guess that when a person is incapacitated the way your parents are, their minds go to a different sort of place, too, not the same as where departed souls go, but perhaps something like it._  
  
“She probably is an expert,” thought Neville. “She probably slips in and out of that other place all the time, which is why she’s sometimes normal and sometimes . . .”  
  
Suddenly, a bizarre idea struck him. Perhaps he should take Luna along with him on a visit to Mum and Dad, and _she_ could try talking to them. He wouldn’t tell Gran, at least not until Luna succeeded. That wouldn’t be easy to arrange. He would have to ask the Healers to keep the visit a secret. Asking Luna posed another problem. She could be prickly at times, especially when people implied she was mad. He definitely did not want to hurt her feelings. She was a friend, and a good one, at that. She couldn’t help being the way she was any more than Mum and Dad could.  
  
The Healers and nurses on the closed ward always gave Neville and Gran a hearty welcome when they visited, but this time, they almost cheered when they saw them.  
  
“Neville, the big hero!”  
  
“Ten Death Eaters!”  
  
“Come see what we’ve done to your parents’ room!”  
  
And before Neville or his Gran could reply, they were ushered into the room. Dad was lying in bed and Mum was sitting up, repeatedly creasing a gum wrapper or some such thing. Neither seemed to take notice of Neville, Gran, or any of the Healers or nurses. All of that was fairly typical. But the wall on which Mum and Dad’s Ministry service awards hung had acquired some new additions. Clippings from The Prophet were up now, too, with Neville’s name highlighted in yellow.  
  
“We’ve put anti-tearing charms on to preserve them,” the nurse told them, laying her hand on Mum’s shoulder.  
  
“It’s a very sweet gesture,” said Gran. “What a shame they can’t appreciate it.”  
  
“Thank you,” echoed Neville. As soon as he spoke, his mother sat bolt upright and stared at him with much less of her usual blank expression.  
  
“She’s slipped back into our world!” thought Neville. He knew just the way to reach her. “May I take Mum down for a walk in the greenhouse?” he asked.  
  
Gran shook her head and the vulture on her hat jerked back and forth furiously. “Off the ward? Neville, you know you can’t. Why even suggest it?”  
  
“I . . . I thought she might enjoy it.”  
  
The Healers and nurses looked at Neville sorrowfully. Then, all eyes seemed to turn toward Mum.  
  
“It’s been quiet on the ward all morning,” said a nurse.  
  
“So it has,” agreed Healer Anselm.  
  
“It might be worthwhile for one of us to see what Basil Klover’s been working on. I doubt those inter-department memos really do his plants justice.”  
  
“All right then, Healer Ryan, you go with them,” said Healer Anselm.  
Healer Ryan smiled and with a light flick of her wand, a wheelchair came rolling forward.  
  
Neville began thanking the staff profusely, but as he watched Healer Ryan help Mum into the wheelchair, he had second thoughts. Mum’s face had gone dull again. She didn’t have the vaguest idea what was happening.  
  
Neville looked over at Gran who was watching the scene in mild disbelief. Still shaking slightly, the vulture on her hat seemed to nod in agreement with her. Neville knew he could not back down now.  
  
“Be back soon, Gran.” He followed Healer Ryan and Mum’s wheelchair to the lifts.  
  
The instant they entered the greenhouse, Neville’s mood lightened. Better still, the herbologists, who all knew precisely what brought him to St. Mungo’s so often, did not make the slightest comment about Mum. They focused on the visiting Healer instead.  
  
“To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?” asked Mr. Klover, shaking the Healer’s hand.  
  
“Neville here decided we ought to give his Mum a little outing. And I’ve been meaning to talk to you about those sleep-inducing spider ferns.”  
  
“Right this way,” said Mr. Klover, leading the Healer a few paces down. Neville wanted to follow, but he wasn’t sure if he should. Their conversation was bound to be interesting, but maybe it would seem like he was nosing in. What if they began talking about the private business of some patient? Neville decided to err on the side of caution. He pushed Mum’s wheelchair slowly in the opposite direction, naming the different plants for her. As always, she didn’t show the slightest glimmer of understanding.  
  
“Here’s one I don’t recognize,” said Neville as they came to a cluster of white-petaled flowers.  
  
“That’s probably because Hogwarts will have banned it,” said Jasmine, the youngest assistant herbologist. “It provides the scent for Amortentia.”  
  
“What’s that?” asked Neville.  
  
“Standard love potion. Fascinating the way it works, really. It smells different to every person depending on what attracts them. And these flowers – phoscolia, they’re called - are the source of that bit of magic.”  
  
“That’s so cool!” said Neville.  
  
“Now hang on before you start getting funny ideas. Love potions don’t do any good for the giver or the taker. In fact, the only one who benefits from love potions are the sellers. I hear there’s a new shop on Diagon Alley that’s raking it on love potions.”  
  
“Fred and George Weasley’s?”  
  
“Yeah, that sounds right,” said Jasmine. “Naturally, we grow these for their healing powers, but Basil started a sort of tradition here of growing one for your sweetheart. You see this bluish-white color? That’s the color of his wife’s hair.”  
  
“It grows in the color that the grower likes most?” asked Neville.  
  
“Oh, no. It’s not _that_ easy. You have to cultivate it, and give it just the right amount of light. It’s a tricky balance. Basil gets this color by bleaching them under full sun and then, to add the bluish tint, he gives them a few hours in moonlight. It took him a while to work it out, too.” Jasmine sighed and smoothed her shiny black hair. “Nobody’s ever gone to such effort for me. I’ll have to assume it’s because my color is too hard to imitate.”  
  
“Has anyone ever tried red?” Neville blurted out.  
  
“Oooh, got a girlfriend, Neville? What’s her name?”  
  
Neville’s face grew hot, not warm like when Gran embarrassed him at Ollivander’s, but hot. He must have been redder than Ginny’s hair. He was grateful that Mum chose that moment to knock the phoscolia out of their pots.  
  
“Oops!” cried Healer Ryan, apparating over immediately. “No, Alice, you must not touch!”  
  
Mr. Klover apparated a split-second after Healer Ryan.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” said Neville.  
  
“That’s quite all right. I daresay we’re capable of nursing them right back to health.” He chuckled, and with a wave of his wand, settled the phoscolia back into their pots. “So, Neville, what have you been up to aside from helping Harry Potter fight Death Eaters? How were your O.W.L.s?”  
  
Neville hadn’t envisioned an audience for delivering this news. “Well, I got an ‘O’ in Herbology.”  
  
“Excellent. I wouldn’t have expected anything less. And how many O.W.L.s overall?”  
  
“Eight,” said Neville. He felt awkward discussing this in front of all these people. Mum was the only family member amongst them, and she didn’t understand him anyway. She’d gone back to creasing her gum wrapper. “I got lucky with History. One of the essay questions was about revolutions in wizarding trade, so I wrote all about how the Mimbulus mimbletonia opened up new markets in the tropics.”  
  
“Good boy. And you passed Potions?”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“Then go get your Herbology N.E.W.T., and in two years, we’ll be seeing you every day. What do you say Jasmine? How’d you like to have Neville on our staff?”  
  
“Sounds great.” Then she whispered something in Mr. Klover’s ear. Whatever it was, it made him laugh. He reached into a pot of phoscolia, pulled up some root, and handed it to Neville.  
  
“Jasmine suggests that you might want to try your hand at cultivating one of these little beauties. But you have to promise you won’t sell it or bring it to Hogwarts.”  
  
“I promise,” said Neville.  
  
“And on that note,” said Healer Ryan, “I think we ought to call this outing to an end. I think it’s been more than enough for your mother.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” agreed Neville.  
  
“I trust we’ll see you again this summer,” said Mr. Klover.  
  
“I think so, sir,” said Neville.  
  
“Good. I want to hear about your success with the phoscolia,” said Jasmine, winking. Neville was relieved she didn’t say anything more than that.  
  
Once back on the lift, Healer Ryan asked, “Mr. Klover has offered you a job?”  
  
“Well, yeah,” said Neville. “It happened last Xmas, but it all depended on whether or not I passed my Potions O.W.L. Oh, and I have to get a N.E.W.T in Herbology. Well, you heard him.” Neville knew he was babbling, but it was much easier to talk about this than what was immediately before them – Mum. Part of him wanted to know if the Healer thought the outing had done Mum any good, but when he considered the mess she’d made of the phoscolia, he was pretty sure he could guess the answer.  
  
“Here you are, back at home,” Healer Ryan said cheerily as she rolled Mum into her room.  
  
“How was it?” Gran asked anxiously.  
  
“Fine,” Healer Ryan and Neville said at the same time.  
  
“Does she mean that?” wondered Neville. “I’m not sure I do.”  
  
He and Gran stayed a little while longer. At the end of their visit, Mum gave Neville the gum wrapper, which he secreted into his pocket alongside the phoscolia root. And then he and Gran went home.  
  
“It’s been a happy birthday for you, hasn’t it Neville?” asked Gran. She didn’t often express concerns for his happiness, but Neville knew she had them.  
  
Neville considered the day. He couldn’t call it happy. Visiting Mum and Dad was never a happy occasion, though of course it was his duty as their only son. But he thought of his new wand and the phoscolia root, and the friends he had in the Healers and herbologists.  
  
“Yeah, Gran,” he said. “I think it was my best birthday ever.”


	25. Chapter 25

  
On the morning after Neville’s birthday, the wizarding wireless reported the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Ollivander. Having just been in the store the previous day, the news disturbed Neville immensely.  
  
“Yours may well have been the last wand he sold,” said Gran.  
  
“Yeah,” agreed Neville. “Remember that man who came in after us? As soon as Mr. Ollivander saw him, he said he had an appointment and left. Do you suppose –”  
  
“Who that man was and what he might have wanted is anyone’s guess,” said Gran. “This is just how it was last time. You never knew who you could trust.”  
  
“It’s horrible.”  
  
“It certainly is.”  
  
With all the doom and gloom on the news, Neville was glad he had the distraction of the garden. Besides all Gran’s herbal needs, there was his Mimbulus mimbletonia, now doubled in size, and he had the new challenge of the phoscolia. He’d become downright obsessive about getting the color just right. He knew it was irrational, but he was harboring a desperate hope that if he could capture the vibrancy of Ginny’s hair color on its petals, it would win her over more truly and completely than any love potion, as if the flower’s magic was even more potent in its raw form.  
  
All summer long, Neville listened to the weather reports meticulously. He brought the phoscolia out in the strongest sun of each day, but he never left it out too long or it would bleach. Jasmine had been right; it was a tricky balance. By the end of holiday, Neville had got it almost perfect, though he was still hoping to catch a few gold highlights. While sitting in the kitchen, storing and preserving the last of the summer harvest for Gran, he put on the wireless and waited eagerly for the weather report.  
  
 _This is Veritus, the Voice of Truth, at Station WIZ. It’ll be back to school tomorrow as young witches and wizards across Britain descend on London’s King’s Cross station for another year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Recently reinstated headmaster Professor Albus Dumbledore says he is very much looking forward to the new school year, but the question on most people’s minds is: What subjects will Harry Potter, the Chosen One, undertake? Professor Griselda Marchbanks, head of the Board of Wizarding Education, would not disclose young Mr. Potter’s O.W.L. results, but . . ._  
  
“The nerve of them to even ask her!” cried Gran. “And besides, a brave boy like Harry Potter surely got all O’s. So good-hearted and polite, too. I was very impressed with him for visiting that professor at St. Mungo’s last Xmas. What a fine young man!”  
  
Neville did not attempt to burst Gran’s bubble. Instead he took two bowls out of the cupboard, filled them with billiberries, and brought them back to the table, placing one in front of her.  
  
“What’s this?"  
  
“Billiberries. They’re good against motion sickness, and seeing as we’re going on the Knight Bus . . .”  
  
Gran nodded and pointed her wand at the cupboard. “Accio sugar!”  
  
“I don’t think you’ll need that,” said Neville, as he tasted a berry. “No, you definitely won’t. I bred them for extra sweetness.”  
  
Gran started on her bowl, too. “Mmm,” she said as she chewed. Neville relished the small compliment. After a few more bites, she said, “Now, please, Neville, by all means, don’t ask the Healers to take Mum and Dad on any more outings. It inconveniences them, and what does it really accomplish?”  
  
“I wasn’t planning on asking again,” sighed Neville. Gran was right. What did it accomplish?  
  
“Good. Now hurry up and finish your berries and then go change your shirt. You’re covered in herb stains. I can’t have you going around looking like that.”  
  
“Yes, Gran,” said Neville, gobbling down his last spoonful of berries.  
  
Neville’s ears pricked up as the voice on the wireless changed from male to female.  
  
 _This is Blizzie, your weather witch, at Station WIZ. Due to the escape of the dementors of Azkaban, temperatures continue at record lows for the summer season. The high today . . ._  
  
“Neville, your shirt!”  
  
“In a minute, I’m listening to –”  
  
“Never mind that. We’re running late. Now go!”  
  
“Yes, Gran,” said Neville, biting down his annoyance. He went to his room.  
  
“Now what should I do with you today?” he asked the phoscolia.  
  
He took a new shirt out of his closet and considered the lighting from each of the windows in the house. He couldn’t risk overexposure, especially on a day when he wouldn’t be home. As he fastened the last of his buttons, he settled on the western window of the kitchen. The sun was weakest there. He went back to the kitchen, positioned it carefully, and was ready to go.  
  
Diagon Alley was their first stop, and Neville was rather disappointed that he didn’t get to speak to anyone he knew there. It would have been fun to step into Fred and George’s shop. Perhaps he’d even see Ginny. But Gran was all business. They were going to buy his schoolbooks and go on to St. Mungo’s.  
  
“Hmmph,” she said when they entered Flourish & Botts. “It seems we’re not the only ones to wait to the last minute for school shopping.”  
  
Gran was quite right. The store was full of Hogwarts students. But in the entire crowd, Neville did not see one friend. He sighed and went over to the shelves marked ‘N.E.W.T.-level Textbooks.’  
  
“Hey! I think that’s one of Harry Potter’s roommates!” a girl said, pointing at him.  
  
“My gosh, Harry’s even got groupies now,” thought Neville. He picked up his new Herbology text and flipped back to the index to see if phoscolia was in it. Just when he reached the ‘P’s’, Gran sent another textbook floating his way.  
  
“ _Advanced Transfiguration_?” said Neville. “But what if – ?”  
  
“I’ll write to Minerva about getting you in,” said Gran.  
  
Neville knew there was no sense in arguing with her, but he did make a point of finding out whether the book was exchangeable while she was busy looking over the magazines. He rejoined her outside of the store.  
  
“You bought _The Quibbler_?” he asked incredulously.  
  
“Of course. They printed Harry Potter’s interview last spring.”  
  
Neville shook his head. Even Gran was becoming a groupie.  
  
Gran summoned the Knight Bus, and just as they were boarding, Neville finally saw someone he knew – Luna, of all people. It was an odd coincidence, considering Gran had just bought The Quibbler. Neville took a look at the man with Luna who had to have been her father. He looked like a perfectly ordinary person, blonde with glasses, no weird vegetable ornaments. But the headlines on _The Quibbler_ told just how weird he was. THREE TON WARBLESNITTER BEACHED IN ARUBA, VAMPIRES INVADE ST. MUNGO’S BLOOD BANK.  
  
Neville sighed. Weird as Luna and her father were, he supposed he’d share his compartment with her on the way to school. He didn’t think he’d be so lucky as to end up with Ginny, and besides, he’d sort of missed Luna that summer.  
  
Without any special excursions to the greenhouse, Neville’s last holiday visit with his parents was as depressing as usual. He and Gran sat around for a few hours while Mum and Dad stared at them vacantly. The only thing that excited Mum was _The Quibbler_. Gran, who’d quickly realized the magazine was rubbish, gave it to Mum to tear and fold to her heart’s content.  
  
Because it was his last day at home, Gran insisted that they visit Uncle Algie, too, so they did not get home until dark. Neville rushed inside to check on the phoscolia. If it had turned bluish in the moonlight . . .  
  
“Drat!” he cried. The leaves were not blue, nor were they orange-red. They were a pale, dull yellow.  
  
“What’s the matter, Neville?” Gran asked. “I think it’s very pretty.”  
  
Neville looked at the plant. It did have a certain delicate beauty, but it wasn’t what he wanted.  
  
“I’ve been an idiot,” he thought. “If Mr. Klover didn’t get it right on the first try, then why did I think I would?”  
  
He considered giving the plant to Gran. She liked it, and he wasn’t permitted to bring it to school anyway. But after all the time and emotion he’d invested in it, he couldn’t just let it go. Perhaps he’d recoup next summer.  
  
“I’ll be leaving this one here, Gran. Will you water it for me?”  
  
“Certainly, boy. You know I do my best with your garden.”  
  
“Yes, you do, Gran. Thanks.”  
  
To spare Gran another ride on the Knight Bus, Neville went to King’s Cross station alone. Much like at Flourish & Botts, he saw loads of people, but no close friends.  
  
“I’m in sixth year,” he thought. “Why do they still ignore me?”  
  
“Hello, Neville,” said a familiar voice behind him.  
  
He swung around. “Luna, hi! How was your summer?”  
  
“Very nice, thank you. How was yours?”  
  
“Oh, it was fine. I got a lot of gardening done.”  
  
“Yes, I suppose you must have. You’ve lost weight, you know.”  
  
Neville looked down at himself. He had lost weight. For a moment, he felt a surge in confidence. And then, looking back up Ginny’s red hair caught his eye. Mesmerized, he forgot everything else around him and watched until she vanished into a compartment. After that, he noticed Harry.  
  
“Hi, Harry!” he called.  
  
Harry seemed genuinely happy to see him and Luna. Until then, he was surrounded by groupies. The three of them found a compartment together, which was sort of a strange experience for Neville. He’d been completely ignored only a minute before, but once he was with Harry, people began looking his way. Harry was nice enough to say it was because he and Luna had taken part in the Ministry battle also, but Neville knew better. Even still, the moment when Harry told his groupies that he preferred his and Luna’s company over theirs was one Neville was sure he’d remember for the rest of his life.  
  
It was great being back amongst friends! Except for one awkward moment when Luna lapsed into looniness, and the disappointing news that Harry had no plans to keep up the D.A., Neville had a great time. The talked about O.W.L.s and Quidditch and even a bit about their adventure at the Ministry. Ron and Hermione joined them later, but it was all interrupted by a note from a new teacher named Slughorn. He and Harry were invited to join him for lunch.  
  
“What does he want me for?” Neville asked. If Harry knew, he wouldn’t say.  
  
But Neville found out all too soon what Professor Slughorn wanted. He wanted to humiliate him in front of a roomful of people, most of whom he barely knew.  
  
“So you’re Neville Longbottom, son of the decorated ex-Aurors. Ah, how well I remember the tragedy!” And he told the whole story of his parents, how he had known them in their school days. Dad, Head Boy, Mum, who gave up the leisurely life of a society witch to fight alongside Dad in the war. He talked about what the Death Eaters had done to them, and where they ended up. It was the longest ten minutes of Neville’s life.  
  
“How are they these days?” asked Slughorn at the end of his recital. “Have they shown any improvement over the years?”  
  
Neville didn’t see how it was any of his business. If Slughorn was such a good friend of his parents, why hadn’t he visited them in all this time? Dumbledore occasionally did. But in spite of his resentment, he politely answered, “No sir.”  
  
Slughorn moved on to Harry, wheedling him to talk about the prophecy, though Harry was very obviously unwilling. Neville understood just how he felt, and said, “We never heard a prophecy.”  
  
“That’s right,” said Ginny, backing him up, but then she let slip that that they’d been in the Ministry, too, which was a mistake. Slughorn began pestering them for details, just as he’d done to Harry. Neville had no intention of obliging him.  
  
Slughorn got the point after a while, and then began to tell them long, boastful stories about his club of favorite students, all of whom had gone on to fame and fortune. It seemed to take hours, and Neville was glad when it was over. He was even gladder not to be favored with an invitation to return. Harry and Ginny went their separate ways, and he went back to his compartment with Luna.  
  
“Trevor behaved very well while you were gone,” she told him. “It was a very long time.”  
  
“Yeah, that new teacher sure likes the sound of his own voice.” He sank down into the seat opposite her and told her all about the Slug Club. “Everyone there was related to someone famous. Except Ginny. She got there for casting the Bat Bogey Hex on Zacharias Smith.” Neville chuckled.  
  
“She’s rather good at that spell, but it doesn’t sound like a very nice thing for her to have done.”  
  
“I suppose,” said Neville, a little ashamed for having laughed.  
  
“I think my father told me about Professor Slughorn. My mother was in his club, you know, but when she married my father, he suddenly lost interest in her.”  
  
“He wasn’t particularly interested in me, either, but I say it’s no loss. Now that I know he’s teaching Defense, I want the D.A. back even more.”  
  
“I’ve still got my galleon,” said Luna, holding up her wrist. She’d attached the coin to a ribbon as a sort of homemade bracelet.  
  
Neville grinned and reached into his pocket. “I’ve got mine, too. But we might have a job convincing Harry. Now that he’s been made Quidditch captain, he’ll be pretty busy.”  
  
“That’s true, I suppose, but we could practice by ourselves.”  
  
Neville considered it. Practicing Defense with Luna wasn’t exactly at the top of his list of favorite things to do. “It’s an idea,” he said noncommittally.  
  
“Yes, it is,” said Luna. Then in her usual, unpredictable way, she changed the subject. “How are your parents? Has there been any improvement?”  
  
It was funny. When Slughorn had asked, it irked him. But he didn’t mind answering Luna.  
  
“They’re no better. I tried reaching them, actually, or at least I tried with Mum. I had her brought to the greenhouse, which is a big deal for a closed ward patient, but it didn’t go too well.”  
  
“Perhaps you’re mistaken.”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Neville, for lack of anything better to say. “So how was your summer? Did you go to Sweden in the end?”  
  
“Sweden?” asked Luna, as though she were confused. “Oh, yes. Daddy and I were kept very busy on the Snorkack trail.”  
  
Neville was sorry he’d asked. He liked Luna much better when she talked like a normal person. He suggested their old stand-by of Exploding Snap. It kept them pleasantly occupied until the prefects came banging on their door. “Robes on! Collect your things! We’re almost there!”  
  
Luna helped him clean up the game, but otherwise, she wasn’t one to rush. While he was scrambling to settle Trevor comfortably amidst his things, Luna stood staring at the window.  
  
“Look, Neville, isn’t the castle beautiful?”  
  
Neville tipped his head out the window. The castle was surrounded by mist and lit up by moonlight. “It really is,” he agreed.  
  
They found a place together on the thestral-drawn carriages, separating into their Houses at the Great Hall.  
  
“Someday,” she told him as they were parting, “I’m going to teach you to play Rack ‘n Rune.”


	26. Chapter 26

Dumbledore had a knack for working surprises into his speeches. For Neville, the thoroughly unexpected thrill of winning the final ten points for Gryffindor was forever etched in his memory, but now it had a counter-balance in bad news: Snape was the new Defense teacher. Suddenly, restarting the D.A. became an urgent matter for Neville. After the first month of settling into the routine of classes, he made arrangements to meet Luna at the Room of Requirement. What he hadn’t counted on was Malfoy beating them to it.  
  
“How’d you get in here? That door was locked!” he demanded.  
  
“We need to be here, so the door opened for us,” said Luna. “We can share the room.”  
  
Neville could tell that Malfoy found her calmness maddening. “Maybe I don’t want to share,” he said.  
  
As it happened, Neville didn’t particularly want to share either, but Luna pressed on.  
  
“You needn’t worry, you know. Whatever you’re hiding from us will stay hidden if it needs to.”  
  
That Malfoy didn’t immediately retort with some snide remark was a dead give-away that Luna was right. Looking around, Neville realized he had never seen the room so full. It was lined with shelves from the ceiling to the floor, covered in all sorts of miscellaneous objects – dusty old books, a cache of liquor bottles that would have supplied a decade-long all-student bash, assorted old Muggle items probably stashed as secret, illegal portkeys, a fair few Skiving Snackboxes, and even a potted phoscolia, withering away for lack of sunlight.  
  
It was plain to see they’d never find Malfoy’s hidden treasure amid all that stuff. Neville didn’t even care to try. But he did walk over to the shelves to rescue the phoscolia, and got sort of a perverse delight in watching Malfoy sweat.  
  
Once Malfoy saw that all Neville had been after was the plant, he reverted to his normal personality. “What are you two losers doing here anyway? Dumbledore’s Army’s defunct, you know.”  
  
“Oh no, it isn’t,” said Neville.  
  
“Would you care to join us?” asked Luna.  
  
“Hah!” said Malfoy.  
  
“Fine,” said Neville. “We’re not illegal anymore. We can go somewhere else.” He turned to leave, but Luna did not move an inch.  
  
“You’re not looking very well, you know. Perhaps you should – “  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got some dread disease from your father’s crackpot magazine. Spare me the medical advice, will you?”  
  
“As I was saying, if only you would listen to the proper authorities, then . . .”  
  
“Shut up!” shouted Malfoy, shooting angry sparks from his wand. “Leave me alone!”  
  
“If you like. Let’s go, Neville.”  
  
So he and Luna left. “What was _that_ all about?” Neville asked when they turned the corner.  
  
“I think it’s his bizzyanitis. I’m afraid he’s reached Stage II.”  
  
Neville knew he’d regret asking, but he couldn’t help himself. “What’s bizzyanitis?”  
  
“Acute shame, characterized first by a compulsion to insult others, and in later stages, a curious self-deception that leads to foolish decisions.”  
  
Neville felt as though an egg-beater had entered his ears and was scrambling his brains. Luna was off on another one of her surreal tangents, but somehow this one made sense. “The compulsion to insult others sounds about right.”  
  
“But the second stage is when it gets dangerous, sometimes just to the sufferer, and sometimes to other people. I’m sure you know about Veritus the Voice of Truth?”  
  
“The wireless announcer?”  
  
“Yes. He was in the June and July issues of _The Quibbler_. At first he was just being rude to everybody. Rude on the air, rude to his fans, but then he reached second stage, got overconfident, and asked for a ten thousand galleon raise.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound very dangerous.”  
  
“It gave his boss a fatal heart attack. The family is crying for revenge. And Veritus has been forced to live the life of a hermit.”  
  
“Luna, that’s ridiculous. I listened to Veritus all summer.”  
  
“That was just a substitute with a magically modified voice.”  
  
Neville shook his head. It was time to steer the conversation back to familiar territory.  
  
“Look, what do you want to do about practicing Defense?”  
  
“Well, as you said, we’re no longer an illegal organization, so we could just use any classroom. That must be why we didn’t get to use the Room of Requirement as we intended. We don’t really need it.”  
  
“Following that logic, we shouldn’t have been able to get in at all. Malfoy locked the door.”  
  
“He needed to hear my advice, but he wouldn’t listen. That’s the second time that happened to me in the Room of Requirement.”  
  
Neville knew better than to ask her about the first time.  
  
Luna sighed. “It is a shame, though. I rather like the Room of Requirement.”  
  
“So do I.”  
  
“Perhaps liking something is almost as good as needing it. Perhaps we should try again tomorrow.”  
  
“Yeah. Malfoy was there today, but he won’t be there every day. See you tomorrow, Luna.”  
  
But the next morning, when Neville heard Veritus’ voice coming from the seventh-years’ dorm room, he decided he didn’t feel much like meeting Luna. She was a friend, but she was best taken in small doses. So at breakfast, he told her he needed to go to the greenhouse that day. It wasn’t a lie. He had to take care of his newly-rescued phoscolia.  
  
Professor Sprout affected a strict frown when she saw it. “You realize, this is a banned flower at Hogwarts.”  
  
“I know, ma’am. It doesn’t really belong to me. I found it, and I saw it needed care, so I brought it here.”  
  
“Where did you find it exactly?”  
  
“In the Room of Requirement, ma’am. I think it needed me.”  
  
Professor Sprout smiled at that explanation, and looked much more like herself. “I had to ask, Neville. I know you’re not the type to brew your own love potions.”  
  
“I wouldn’t even know how.”  
  
“That was a statement about your honesty, not your ability. All right, then. If you want to nurse the poor thing back to health, I permit you to do it here. But I don’t want it going back to the castle and especially not into the dorms.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am. And um . . . ma’am?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I’ve got another phoscolia at home – it was a present – may I ask my Gran to send it here, so I can take care of both of them together?”  
  
“Yes, Neville. Go right ahead.”  
  
Neville was happy. The greenhouse was a better environment for the two phosolia _and_ for him. Now that Dean was dating Ginny, his own room had become an uncomfortable place. The weeks of the school term flew by and Neville spent several hours every day tending his plants. With great devotion and a few odd charms, he restored the petals on the rescued phoscolia to their natural bloom. The weird thing was, the new phoscolia turned precisely the same dull yellow as the other one. Try as he might, Neville couldn’t do anything to change them, and the onset of winter wasn’t helping.  
  
One cold Saturday morning, Neville woke up early to go study the clouds. He’d been reading Muggle books on weather patterns, and he wanted to go out and see what he could learn for himself.  
  
Other than the house-elves tiptoeing around, the entire school was asleep. Neville tiptoed, too. But once outside, he could walk normally. He walked away from the castle, toward the forest. Smoke was billowing from the chimney of Hagrid’s hut. There was not another soul in sight. Neville enjoyed the quiet beauty of the empty grounds. He climbed the tallest hill for the best possible view, and there, sitting on the ground with a notebook in her lap, was Luna. She turned at the sound of his footsteps.  
  
“Hello. Are you here to study the clouds?”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, wondering how she knew.  
  
“So am I. I didn’t know you were a student of hygromancy.”  
  
“Hygromancy?” he repeated, sitting down.  
  
“Divination by moisture. It’s an old centaurian art, but being human, I find it rather difficult.”  
  
“Sorry I can’t help you. I failed Divination. The only thing I can tell you is that those clouds are full of precipitation, which means we’ll probably have snow in a few hours.”  
  
“I thought so!” said Luna, happily. “But now I’m trying to determine exactly what the snow means. Usually, thick clouds are a bad sign, but these feel very good to me.”  
  
In any conversation about Divination, Neville was out of his depths. A conversation about Divination with Luna was off the scale. Normally, he’d just make an excuse and go elsewhere, but there was something about her smile and the pinkness in her cheeks that made him want to stay.  
  
“Umm . . . the reason for snow is to blanket the earth and insulate it from really low temperatures. That way, it doesn’t freeze in winter and it yields better produce in spring.”  
  
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. There would be a temporary obscuring of what’s really important, but it would lead to bigger and better later on. How do you know so much about snow clouds if you’ve never studied hygromancy?”  
  
“That’s Muggle wisdom, actually. So . . . um . . . how was your term?”  
  
“Lonely,” said Luna. “I kept waiting for you near the Room of Requirement, but you never came.”  
  
Neville squirmed inside. He didn’t know which was harder to cope with – her loony ideas or her brutal honesty. But this time, she made his excuses for him.  
  
“I don’t suppose we would have gotten in anyway. Now that Professor Snape is teaching Defense, we have less of a need for the D.A. He’s a very good teacher, and he certainly knows the subject.”  
  
As Luna’s loony statements went, it wasn’t the looniest, but he still didn’t agree with it. He was doing much better in Snape’s Defense class than he’d ever done in Potions, but he didn’t think Snape himself was the reason. He’d mastered more advanced spells in the D.A., and besides, defensive magic sort of came to him naturally.  
  
“Also, Draco Malfoy uses the room practically every day. He posts guards sometimes. Once he used my roommates, Kali and Braunoza. I didn’t even think they knew Draco. But they were just as rude to me as ever, and they wouldn’t let me near the door.”  
  
Neville had another pang of guilt. He was just about her only friend, and he’d been neglecting her. “Listen, Luna, what are you doing today after breakfast?”  
  
“I don’t have any plans,” she said.  
  
“Then let’s practice today.”  
  
“All right!” she said brightly.  
  
They ended up spending the entire day together. They tried getting into the Room of Requirement, but it was sealed shut, so they practiced Defense in a classroom instead. After they got tired of it, he took her to the greenhouse, where he spent several hours showing her plants – every single one, except the phoscolia. Most people wouldn’t have listened for so long, but Luna actually seemed interested, and Neville had a sense it wasn’t just because she was hoping to do well on her O.W.L. in June.  
  
But Luna did have her limitation in listening ability. In the middle of his explanation about vervain, she cried, “Snow!” and went running out of the greenhouse.  
  
Neville followed. The snow slowly covered the vast grounds around the castle. The two of them stood there watching. It was breathtaking.  
  
“I don’t think there’s anything as magical as nature,” said Luna.  
  
Neville felt the same way.  
  
The snow was up to their ankles when they decided to go inside. It was getting dark, too.  
  
“Let’s try the Room of Requirement again!” said Luna eagerly.  
  
Neville was thinking more of calling it a day and separating for supper, but he couldn’t say no to her. He didn’t expect to be let in anyway.  
  
But he was wrong. The room opened for them, but it was neither set up for a D.A. meeting nor cluttered with all the shelves they’d seen with Malfoy. It was a homey, carpeted lounge with a table for two in the center.  
  
“Look, it’s given us supper!”  
  
So Neville and Luna sat down to eat. It wasn’t anything elaborate, probably the very same meal being served in the Great Hall, but Neville supposed she had a need to eat with him instead of alone at the Ravenclaw table. And it made him feel good to know he was doing that for her.  
  
Once their plates had vanished, a Rack ‘n Rune game appeared at their table. Luna attempted to teach him, and he felt trying was the least he could do, after she’d listened to him so long in the greenhouse. But even in English, Rack ‘n Rune wasn’t his thing, so he suggested he walk her back to Ravenclaw House. To his relief, she did not sigh or pout or say anything about how lonely she’d be without him. So they headed back through the castle, but stopped in a corridor when they heard someone crying from inside a girls’ bathroom.  
  
“Who’s that?” wondered Neville.  
  
“It’s not Myrtle,” said Luna. She paused and listened some more. “It’s not Cho Chang, either.”  
  
“You know, I think it’s Hermione. Maybe you’d better go in there and see if she’s all right.”  
  
“Yes, I suppose I should. It could be any number of things. Merdvoxes, crickichuckies. I hope it’s not leezetuggers. Then she’ll need the hospital wing.”  
  
“Maybe she just needs a good listener.”  
  
After all that about leezetuggers, Neville was suddenly glad he was taking leave of Luna. He turned and walked a few steps.  
  
“Thank you for being so nice to me, Neville,” she called.  
  
A little pang of guilt seized him again. Just when he thought he’d put a little distance between himself and Luna. “Sure. We’ll do it again soon.”  
  
She smiled and went into the bathroom.  
  
“She’s kind of pretty when she smiles,” thought Neville. But talking to her was like floating aimlessly through the air. He felt like he needed to land, to have some plain, old, everyday conversation. He was sure to get it back at the dorm.  
  
“Ah! So close!” he heard Seamus say on the other side of the door.  
  
Neville let himself in. Whoosh! Something whizzed past his face. “What the -?”  
  
“You should’ve knocked,” said Seamus.  
  
“It’s my room, too.” He sat down on his bed. Seamus was standing opposite a makeshift picture of Firenze. He lifted his wand at it, and a dart came flying out. It pierced Firenze’s right hoof.  
  
“So where is everybody?” Neville asked.  
  
“Out having a good snog, same as you were,” said Seamus, sending out two more darts in rapid succession.  
  
Of course, Neville hadn’t been doing anything of the kind, but no self-respecting male ever admitted to inexperience.  
  
“Me mam says it’s normal for girls to get crushes on their teachers, but this is a bleedin’ horse!” The next dart hit Firenze’s upper arm. “You’ve got the right idea, mate. Take it where you can get it. She’s no troll, even if she is loony.”  
  
Neville reacted without thinking. “I wasn’t out snogging Loony!” There, he’d admitted it. But he’d rather people would believe the truth than . . .  
  
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, mate. Didn’t I just say she’s no troll?”  
  
“Looks aren’t everything! There’s a lot more to . . . to . . . girls than that!” Angrily, he turned away from Seamus. Why did everyone think he and Luna were something more than friends? Just because he was only a few rungs above her on the social ladder? Or because, as Malfoy had said last year, his parents were insane, so she ought to make him feel right at home? Well, he didn’t feel at home with her any more than he felt at home on the closed ward.  
  
Neville took a few deep breaths, the way he’d learned to do when he was angry with Gran. Seamus, and almost everyone else for that matter, didn’t know about his parents, and wouldn’t make that connection. But if not for his parents and their problems, Luna’s flights of fancy wouldn’t make him want to run so far and fast away from her. Otherwise, he liked her. She was serious about the D.A. She’d fought in the Ministry. Her heart was certainly in the right place, even if her mind was always slipping in and out of unfathomable worlds. And as Seamus had said, she wasn’t a troll. No, definitely not a troll.  
  
But now that he’d lost his temper in front of Seamus, he’d never be believed. He turned back toward him and in a calm voice said, “Luna and I are friends, and that’s all. I don’t feel anything more than that for her, and I don’t tell lies.”  
  
Seamus shrugged and said nothing. For a few minutes, the only sound in the room was the whirring of darts from Seamus’ wand. The cold silence finally broke when Peeves’ voice came ringing through the halls. Neville was thankful. If nothing else, Peeves was always good for laughs.  
  
“What’s he on about now?” asked Neville in a falsely light tone, sticking his head out the door.  
  
“POTTY LURVES LOONY! POTTY LUUUUURVES LOONY!”  
  
A gaggle of gossiping girls followed in Peeves’ wake. “Harry Potter asked Loony Lovegood to Slughorn’s party!”  
  
Neville shut the door. Seamus held up a copy of _The Prophet_ with a picture of ‘the Chosen One’ on the cover.  
  
“Care for a game of darts?” he asked, smirking.  
  
Neville was not going to shout again. “No, thank you,” he said politely, though his insides were jumping in all directions. He went back to his side of the room, and picked up the farmer’s almanac, the very same book he’d begun the day with, but he couldn’t keep his mind on it.  
  
“What does he take me for?” thought Neville. It was bad enough Seamus didn’t believe him about Luna, but why would he want to throw darts at Harry? He considered Harry one of his best friends. He didn’t even bear Dean any ill will. But for some strange reason, it bothered him that Luna was going on a date with Harry, and what bothered him more was that it bothered him.  
  
“Accio Herbology text!” he said. Working out the problem of the phoscolia had to be easier than this.


	27. Chapter 27

“I’m so glad there are no nargles between us,” Luna said to Ginny.  
  
They were alone in her room and Ginny was helping her dress for Professor Slughorn’s party.  
  
“If you say so, I’m sure it’s good, but could you tell me the real word for nargle?”  
  
“I don’t think there is a single word for it,” said Luna. She would have to explain by example. Cho was a good one, but perhaps mentioning her would make the point a little too clear to Ginny. Luna wouldn’t do that to her. “It’s something like a bug that stings people, very painfully sometimes. Hermione was badly stung the other day when she saw your brother kissing Lavender Brown.”  
  
“Ohhhh. That’s jealousy.”  
  
“It’s a bit more complicated than just jealousy.”  
  
“Don’t I know it. But why should there be any nargles between _us_?”  
  
“Because I’m going to the party with Harry.”  
  
If a nargle had just stung Ginny, she hid it very well. “I have no claims on Harry,” she said with a shrug. “Besides, I’m going out with Dean now.”  
  
“And Harry did say we were going as friends,” Luna added for safety’s sake. “So even if other girls get nargly about it, they really have no reason to.”  
  
“That’s what’s good about friendship dates. No nargles at all. I think it’s the best way to start off dating. My first date ever was with Neville.”  
  
Luna fumbled and dropped all the contents of her jewelry box. “Excuse me. I’m sorry,” she said.  
  
“You don’t have to apologize to _me_. It’s your stuff. C’mon, we’ll clean up.” She pulled out her wand.  
  
“No,” said Luna, becoming even more embarrassed. “I mean I’m sorry about the nargle. I tried very hard. I honestly thought I was immune.”  
  
Ginny stared at her. “What are you –? Do you mean –? You mean you like _Neville_?”  
  
“Of course,” said Luna, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. “I thought that was obvious.”  
  
“Luna,” said Ginny, conjuring her a tissue, “it’s kind of hard to tell these things with you.”  
  
“I don’t understand much about boys,” Luna admitted. “You’re the only person I ever thought I could talk to about them, and I was always afraid because . . . I suppose deep down, I knew I wasn’t over that nargle.”  
  
“Look, it’s okay. Neville will move on after a while. Boys always do.”  
  
“Neville has liked you for a long time.”  
  
“Only because I was the first one to give him a chance. But once he realizes that you like him, and that really, you’d be much better for him . . . ”  
  
“But he doesn’t realize it. He still thinks I’m loony.” She plopped down onto her bed miserably. Ginny sat beside her.  
  
“So when did you start liking him?”  
  
“In the D.A. Do you remember the day he Stunned me by accident?”  
  
“He was aiming for Harry. Yeah, I remember.”  
  
“Well, when I woke up and he was leaning over me all worried because it was his fault, and he was just so kind about it, it made me feel . . .” and her voice trailed off, not only because she knew no words to describe what she felt, but because a wrackspurt had taken hold of Ginny. Luna immediately understood what it was. Ginny had felt the very same way when she woke up to Harry in the Chamber of Secrets, and she knew she oughtn’t think about it as long as she was dating Dean.  
  
“It’s very good that you’re going to the party with Harry,” she said, coming back to herself. “First of all, by waiting around, you’re not being fair to yourself. You should go out and have fun. And second, since it’s only a friendship date, it’s your chance to turn Neville’s head.”  
  
“I don’t understand. How is going to a party with Harry going to make Neville like me more?”  
  
“Trust me. It’s the way boys think. As soon as you start going out with one, the others perk up and notice.”  
  
Luna still didn’t understand and wondered if she ever would. She took momentary pleasure in the less complicated matter of watching her fallen jewelry float back into the box and then seeing the box float back onto her shelf.  
  
“That’s another thing,” said Ginny. “No butterbeer necklace and no vegetable earrings.”  
  
“But I like those. I made them myself.”  
  
“Not for this party.”  
  
“What about my D.A. bracelet?” asked Luna, holding up her wrist ribbon with the galleon charm.  
  
“Oh, that’s cute!” said Ginny. “I wish I had thought of it.”  
  
“So I should wear it?”  
  
“Yes. It’s not fashionable, but it definitely makes a statement. Now let’s see your dress robe.”  
  
Luna brought out her never-worn robe, a present from Dad for arranging Harry’s interview and bolstering sales.  
  
“Silver?” said Ginny.  
  
“Madam Malkin said it brings out the color of my eyes, and that my eyes are my best feature.” Luna put on the robe.  
  
“I see what she means. Let’s work on your hair then. Sit back down.”  
  
Waving her wand over Luna, Ginny charmed her hair into a bun, then an upsweep, and then a French braid. Luna watched it all in the mirror. “I don’t look like myself,” she said each time.  
  
“C’mon, Luna. Go with the upsweep. I think it’s the best.”  
  
“If you say so.”  
  
Ginny then started on her make-up. Colored powder shot out of Ginny’s wand and landed on Luna’s eyelids, cheeks, and lips.  
  
“Where did you learn all this?”  
  
“ _Witch Weekly_. Mum would never teach me, and I don’t have any sisters. So how do you like it?”  
  
Luna looked in the mirror. She tried to be polite. “I suppose it takes getting used to.”  
  
Ginny laughed. “You’re welcome. Now, where are you meeting Harry?”  
  
“At the entrance hall.”  
  
“Good. Go there now.”  
  
“But it’s still early.”  
  
“I know, but I need time to go find Neville and come up with some excuse to get him there so he can see how pretty you look.”  
  
“That seems rather sneaky.”  
  
Ginny gave her a good-natured pat on the shoulder. “Welcome to the world of dealing with boys.”  
  
Luna did as Ginny said and went downstairs to the entrance hall. People passed her by, whispered, and went on. She was beginning to get bored just standing there like that, but then Neville walked by, his eyes glued to the ceiling.  
  
“Hello, Neville,” she said.  
  
“Hi, Luna.” He continued looking up at the ceiling.  
  
“What are you doing?” she asked.  
  
“I’m checking the decorations. Ginny’s worried that Fred and George sent a package of Itchy Juice Ivy from their shop and got a student to switch it for mistletoe. Stand back. You don’t want it dripping on you.”  
  
“Aren’t you putting yourself at risk by standing under it that way?”  
  
Neville did not answer immediately. He studied the hanging plants a little longer. “It doesn’t matter. That’s real mistletoe.”  
  
At last he straightened out and stood normally. Luna stepped forward. His eyes widened in surprise.  
  
“Luna, you look _nice_!”  
  
“Thank you.” Her natural impulse was to credit Ginny, but she had a feeling Ginny wouldn’t want that. “I’m going to Professor Slughorn’s party, you know.”  
  
“I heard. Well, um, have a good time. I’d better go check the other rooms.” And he walked away in a bit of a daze.  
  
Luna stood alone again for a few moments, and then Ginny ran up to her and gave her a squeeze.  
  
“That was perfect! You said all the right things!”  
  
“What do I do now?”  
  
“Go to the party with Harry. And do what Neville said: have a good time. I’ll see you there, but just so you know, I’m going to give you and Harry a wide berth for mingling.”  
  
Ginny went away, and after a few minutes, large bunches of girls began congregating in the hallway. There were girls from every year and every House, some of whom she knew, but most of whom she didn’t. All of them looked her up and down. Not only were they nargly, they were unkind. Luna overheard some of their comments.  
  
“What does Harry Potter see in _her_?”  
  
“She does sort of have a pretty face and a decent figure, but look at that robe!”  
  
“Gladrags Bargain Basement for sure!”  
  
“Well, even if Harry Potter does prefer blondes, once she opens her mouth, it’ll all be over, and he’ll be available again.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“C’mon. We’re talking about Loony Lovegood.”  
  
As soon as Harry arrived, the girls turned their focus from her to him. They weren’t unkind to him, of course, but Luna could tell - he still thought they were rude. He immediately led her away to the staircase, and once they were on the way, nothing else mattered but the party. Even from the hallway they could hear music and voices. And when they went inside – other than in the Great Hall, Luna had never seen so many people in one room at one time.  
  
Luna spotted Ginny right away, but Harry did not notice her. She waved and pulled up the sleeve to her robe to show Luna that she’d made her own D.A. galleon bracelet. After that, she held a finger to her lips as if to say, “Shhh!” and then turned and went with Dean to the refreshment table.  
  
“Does she mean I shouldn’t talk at the party?” Luna wondered. That would be difficult. Professor Slughorn was introducing Harry to a writer named Eldred Worple, whom Luna had heard about from Dad. He said that Eldred Worple was to books what Rita Skeeter was to newspapers. If Luna couldn’t speak, how could she warn Harry not to grant Worple the four- to five-hour interviews he was suggesting? Luckily, Harry realized the danger himself. As soon as Worple mentioned gold, Harry made an excuse and they went away.  
  
Harry took her by the hand and pulled her through the crowd toward Hermione, which got them some more stares, though this time, Harry paid no attention. Luna kept Ginny’s advice and didn’t speak the whole time Harry and Hermione were talking, but she felt she had to break it when she saw Professor Trelawney. Surely Ginny wouldn’t want her to snub a teacher.  
  
“Hello,” she said politely.  
  
“Good evening, my dear,” said Professor Trelawney, who seemed to be having trouble focusing on her. “I haven’t seen you in my classes lately.”  
  
“No, I have Firenze this year.”  
  
It was a very good thing she had said “Firenze” instead of “Professor Firenze.” The mere mention of him sent Professor Trelawney into a tirade. It was painful to listen to. Professor Trelawney had allowed herself to be influenced by the Helium Huckster. Luna could see it was very bad for her. Her vision was becoming blurred.  
  
Once she’d finally finished – and that took her a long while – she noticed Harry. Immediately she began calling him “the Chosen One,” which he did not like at all. He must have been grateful when Professor Slughorn and Professor Snape joined the conversation. They began talking about his coursework instead of the prophecy.  
  
Luna stayed quiet when the professors were talking, but when Harry said he wanted to become an Auror, she simply couldn’t hold back. It was dangerous! Him – work for the Ministry? But Harry didn’t listen to her warning. He just laughed and spit up his drink. Professor Snape approved, though. He narrowed his eyes at her.  
  
In the middle of the conversation, Draco Malfoy caused a bit of a commotion by doing something he called “gate crashing.”  
  
“What an odd code,” thought Luna. She knew Draco didn’t take Runes, so she began scrambling the English letters, seeing if she could break it that way.  
  
“Greasing acts?” she wondered. “What would that mean – slippery pretending? It fits, but it leaves over the ‘h.’ Perhaps it’s ‘cheat sniggar’ – lying and laughing? If so, then he made a mistake in spelling.”  
  
Harry broke in on her train of thought. “I’ll be back in a bit, Luna – er – bathroom.” And before Luna could say a word, Harry was out the door.  
  
Luna realized that he’d invented an excuse instead of using a code, though both accomplished the same thing. Harry would not be going to the bathroom nor would he be back in a bit, if at all. He was going to follow Professor Snape and Draco Malfoy. After all, he could be very slippery, too. So Luna took no offense and turned back to Professor Trelawney to resume their conversation. She did not see Harry again that night, and though Ginny was indignant on her behalf, Luna assured her that she had not minded at all and thoroughly enjoyed her very first party.  
  
On the last day before winter holiday, Luna went to see Professor Firenze. She always had questions for him – this time, she’d brought the coordinates of her house so that he could tell her what to look for in the skies during the holiday – but secretly, she hoped that if she went to see him frequently enough, sooner or later, he’d make a prediction for her. That day, she got her wish.  
  
“Did you enjoy your party?” he asked her after his long explanation of the angles of the moon, Mars, and the Pleiades.  
  
“Oh, yes, sir!”  
  
“It was foretold that you would. Your fortune has already shifted. You will not find yourself alone so often from now on.”  
  
It was the best news Luna could possibly imagine. “Oh, thank you, sir! Happy . . . um . . .”  
  
“I do not share in your human customs. But thank you for the sentiment, Luna, daughter of Rowena.”  
  
She sailed out of his office.  
  
Luna was not the least bit surprised, though very pleased, when Neville shared his compartment with her on the ride home. He did it again on the return trip, too. And then, when the new term began, he spent a little of each day with her. They always met at the Room of Requirement, sometimes getting in, but most times not. Whenever they couldn’t get in, they walked around the castle, though as the weather got warmer, they went outside more and more. They even went around Hogsmeade together. Except for when her mother was alive, Luna could not remember ever being happier.


	28. Chapter 28

Dumbledore was pacing up and down in his office, deep in thought. His time was limited while Tom’s was not, and somehow, he had to reverse the tide. His next move depended on Harry. He sat down at his desk and took up quill and parchment. If Harry had not gotten the memory by now, he would have to impress upon him once again just how much was at stake.  
  
He winced as he finished the note. The gradual atrophy of his hand was making even the smallest tasks painful. He wondered if he should bewitch a quill to be like the one Sophie Rockrimmon used to have. He could simply think into it and . . .  
  
The quill! Why hadn’t he realized it before? With its powers and Sophie’s lineage, it could easily have been Rowena Ravenclaw’s. All those hours of searching for clues in _Hogwarts: A History_ , all those letters to libraries and academies across the wizarding world, and it was right there in the hands of her own family members. Or at least it had been.  
  
Disparate ideas were racing through Dumbledore’s mind, and he needed to sort them out clearly. He slipped into the Pensieve and let it take him where it would. He landed in the familiar scene of Hokey’s prison cell, a scene he revisited often since he’d been searching for the horcruxes. It was the day he first discovered that Tom was collecting magical objects that belonged to the Hogwarts founders.  
  
“He come to the house many times, sir. My mistress like him. I don’ mean to kill my mistress, sir. I loves my mistress.”  
  
“I believe you, Hokey.”  
  
The Pensieve shook him forward, but not far. He was sitting across from a young, mourning Sophie Rockrimmon.  
  
“The same day, of course,” he murmured to himself.  
  
He watched as his young self cast the Tillhiasit charm over her and her possessions. If he had only known back then why Tom was after all those objects! Merely keeping and using them could never be enough for him. Of course he would manipulate them for his own nefarious ends. What a colossally regrettable mistake!  
  
“That should do for future generations, as well,” his younger self said.  
  
The Pensieve shook harder and faster, bringing him decades forward. He was standing at the Lovegoods’ little cottage. Leonard opened the door for him, and inside, nine-year-old Luna jumped to her feet and cried “Grandfather!”  
  
He and Leonard looked at each other in some surprise.  
  
“You pay me a great compliment, young lady,” he said, entering. “Your grandfather was one of the most outstanding wizards I have ever had the privilege of knowing, but I am not he.”  
  
“This is Professor Dumbledore, Luna. Do you remember how I told you he would come and talk to you about Mummy?”  
  
A shadow seemed to pass over Luna’s face and her voice became unnaturally low. “Because I am the only one who saw.”  
  
“That’s right, sweetie. Professor, won’t you sit down?”  
  
Dumbledore watched himself sit on the couch and pat the cushion so that Luna would join him. With some timidity, she did.  
  
Leonard pulled up a chair. “We know it’s hard for you, sweetie, but it’s the only way we have of finding out what really happened.”  
  
Dumbledore remembered how desperately he wanted to put her at ease. “Perhaps you would like a drink? Butterbeer? Hot cocoa?”  
  
“Butterbeer.”  
  
He conjured a bottle for her. Like any wizarding child, she hesitated before accepting a drink from a stranger.  
  
“Go on, Luna,” Leonard urged her.  
  
Luna looked from her father to Dumbledore and then to the bottle of butterbeer. Dumbledore magically popped the cork for her. She took the bottle and sipped.  
  
“Before we begin, I hope you will not mind my asking: what made you think I was your grandfather?”  
  
Luna swallowed her drink. “Because you were at Granny’s funeral last year and now at Mummy’s, so I thought you were him, coming from the better place to tell us they were all right.”  
  
How vividly Dumbledore remembered that moment! At nine years old with an immature yet clear understanding of eternity, Luna Lovegood was at once precociously aware and painfully tragic.  
  
Leonard took her hand in his. “Once someone has gone to the better place, we can never see them in body again.”  
  
“Yes, I know,” said Luna, “but I thought an Unspeakable would be different.”  
  
“No, sweetie, not even an Unspeakable is that powerful.”  
  
A few tears fell from Luna’s eyes. “I suppose I should have known that. And I suppose nobody would come to tell me that Mummy is all right because she’s been telling me herself this whole time.”  
  
“Have you heard anything else from her?” asked Dumbledore.  
  
The tears fell faster. “Mostly, she says, ‘I love you.’”  
  
Had Luna run crying into her room at that moment, Dumbledore would have understood, but she did not. She dried her tears and looked up at him.  
  
“You should know, Luna, that many people who have lost loved ones hear from them afterward, though from the sound of it, I think you can hear a good deal more.”  
  
“So you think it’s real then?” said Leonard anxiously. “I mean, I heard Rowena’s cry loud and clear that first time, and more subtle whisperings since then, but Luna speaks of it constantly. And considering what she’s seen, I couldn’t help but worry that -”  
  
“Considering what she’s seen, I think she is coping exceptionally well,” said Dumbledore. “Never underestimate the power of the mother-to-child bond. And of course, there are her own inherited faculties, perfectly obvious to me, even in these very few minutes of meeting her.”  
  
“Thank you, Professor. You’ve taken a great weight off my mind.”  
  
Dumbledore nodded to him, but continued with Luna. “But even though you can hear your mother now, I think you will hear less and less from her over time. That is the natural way of things.”  
  
Wide-eyed, Luna stared at him. Dumbledore could see on his own face just how much he was at a loss for what to do next. Called in for his experience with children as much as for his magical expertise, the responsibility on him was heavy. Leonard was relying on him, and Luna had begun to trust him, but how to proceed?  
  
Luna spoke up. “Mummy was caught by a bad wrackspurt that morning.”  
  
“A wrackspurt?” repeated Dumbledore, trying to work out the code.  
  
“Particularly distracting ideas,” explained Leonard. “Just a household code.”  
  
“I see. And do you know what her wrackspurt was about?”  
  
Luna shook her head. “She didn’t tell me.”  
  
Dumbledore looked to Leonard. “It could have been several things. If you recall, you were here the night before, giving us your latest reports, and she was upset to hear that her mother was once friendly with Voldemort.”  
  
“I recall.”  
  
But his current self had not recalled it until now. He could clearly picture Rowena’s shock over her mother’s friendship with Tom Riddle, but when and why did that shock translate into her impulse to explode her quill?  
  
“Then, there was the Crouch trial. She denied it, but I don’t see how she couldn’t have been thinking of Alice.” Leonard’s voice began to crack. “And then there was the sound experiment. The immediate cause.” He struggled to compose himself.  
  
“But Mummy wasn’t so very unhappy when you left,” said Luna. “You told us the centaur story.”  
  
“Oh, my,” said Leonard. “I don’t know if _I_ can bear this. The centaur story is how Rowena and I began dating. The path to her destiny was clear but short, the centaur told her.” His voice cracked more. “Rowena and I thought he was talking about us, but now I see, the centaur foresaw how short her life would be!”  
  
Leonard could not fight it any longer. He buried his face in his hands and gave in to full, loud sobs.  
  
Perturbed at her father’s grief, Luna got off the couch, put her arms around him, and began to sing. At the time, Dumbledore thought it was a touching gesture, but he would soon learn that her song was much, much more.  
  
“Look at my little girl, Professor. She’s braver than I am.” He dried his eyes and adjusted his glasses. Luna returned to her place on the couch.  
  
“You are very brave, Luna,” said Dumbledore, “and these details are exactly what we need to hear. Can you tell me everything you remember about what happened after your father left? Every detail, no matter how unimportant it may seem.”  
  
Luna paused to think and then said, “We talked a little more about the centaur. Mummy said that Daddy said that one day a centaur would come to our house so she could interview him for _The Quibbler_.”  
  
Even in his pain, Leonard half-laughed.  
  
“Intriguing idea,” said Dumbledore. His current self still thought so.  
  
“But then she said she thought Daddy was wrong because centaurs always do things their own way. And then,” she said, lowering her eyes and looking at her hands in her lap, “I asked her about the door in the Department of Mysteries.”  
  
Neither man expected _that_.  
  
“My gosh,” said Leonard. “A premonition.”  
  
Luna looked up, her forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “What’s a premonition?”  
  
“It is a kind of wrackspurt that tells you what is going to happen before it actually does,” said Dumbledore.  
  
“It wasn’t one of those,” said Luna, shaking her head. “Then I would have felt sad and scared, but I didn’t think . . . I didn’t know she would -”  
  
Another shadow crossed Luna’s face. She was slipping ahead into the traumatic part of the memory. Dumbledore had to pull her back quickly. Leaning close to her, he asked, “What was your question to your Mummy?”  
  
“Umm . . .” she said vaguely, as she struggled to get back on track. “I wanted to know if the Ministry could block the door.”  
  
“I see. And what did she tell you?”  
  
“She said the door was so powerful, no wizard could control it.”  
  
“That is very true,” said Dumbledore. “And then what happened?”  
  
“She said I could go out and play while she was working, but I didn’t want to. So she let me stay with her. I played Rack ‘n Rune.”  
  
“And what was she doing while you were playing?”  
  
“Reading.”  
  
“Reading what, Luna?” Leonard asked. “Please, sweetie. Go to the bookshelves. It’ll help you remember.”  
  
Luna got up off the couch. She spent a long time looking over each book on the shelves, and there were very many. Clearly, she was trying her hardest. But after a long while, she turned back to them tearfully and cried, “I don’t know! I just don’t know!”  
  
“It’s all right, Luna. Come back now.”  
  
She ran to her father’s arms and he took her in his lap. Tears coursed down her cheeks, but she did not stop talking.  
  
“I can’t remember what she was reading, but she did it for a very long time. I finished three full games of solitaire.”  
  
“That’s about an hour and a half,” murmured Leonard.  
  
“And then she said, ‘Luna, go outside’ – hard like that, and that wasn’t the way she talked normally. I still didn’t want to go, but she said I had to because she was going to try an experiment and I might get hurt and . . .”  
  
Clinging to her father, her face froze in fright as she relived the scene in her mind. But she did not break eye contact, and Dumbledore saw every bit of it with her. He touched his wand to her temple – she did not resist – and extracted the memory so horrifying she could not express it in words.  
  
The Pensieve shook ever so slightly, shifting perspective so that Dumbledore was brought to Luna’s memory.  
  
“Incendio quill!” cried Rowena. The quill exploded, pulling Rowena, in open-mouthed shock, into the fireball. Consumed in flames, she collapsed to the floor. For a few seconds, Luna was too petrified to move, but then she realized her mother’s life was depending on her. She ran to the kitchen, filled a pot with water, ran back to her mother, and poured it over her. Then she sent an owl for help. But even spells cast by the most skilled of wizards could not have saved Rowena. As she lay dying, the quill released its voices - the bizarre, inexplicable result of her experiment. A choir of languages, an eerie, cackling laugh, and last, the song Luna had sung to comfort her father.  
  
The Pensieve shifted back to Dumbledore’s own point of view. Luna was sobbing while Leonard rocked and soothed her in his lap, his own tears soaking her hair.  
  
Dumbledore picked up her unfinished bottle of butterbeer. “I treated this with phoenix tears,” he confessed. “Drink it. You’ll feel better.”  
  
She choked back more sobs, shuddered, and forced herself to drink. Slowly, she began to calm down. But the phoenix tears were merely a stop-gap measure. She would have a long, hard road to recovery.  
  
“You have been very strong and brave, Luna. What you have done would be difficult even for adults. Perhaps you might like to nap now. Heaven knows, this has taken a lot out of you.”  
  
“I don’t want a nap.”  
  
She slid off her father’s lap and resumed her place on the couch, fixing Dumbledore with an expectant look he could never forget, as if to say, “I’ve done my part. Now you do yours.” She wanted a solution to the mystery as badly as Leonard did, and she was going to sit there waiting for it. Dumbledore did not protest.  
  
“What can you tell me about the quill, Leonard?”  
  
“It was Rowena’s prize possession, a graduation gift from her mother. She used it all the time. She wouldn’t have wanted to destroy it.”  
  
“Do you know anything about its origins?”  
  
“Well, no. You see, Rowena was always vague about the treasures from her mother’s home. We sold most of them to cover the debts we accrued running The Quibbler, but she cherished the quill too much to sell it. In any case, I was left out of her negotiations with Borgin & Burke. I never found out the history or value of any of her mother’s things. She deliberately hid from me how much she was sacrificing, and for the sake of marital harmony, I thought it was the best thing to let her.”  
  
“Perfectly understandable. What were its powers?”  
  
“It had a mind of its own. It knew many, many languages, and it was able to pick up Rowena’s thoughts so her writing always flowed easily. I used it myself on occasion. With translations, it always helped, but it never melded with me the way it did with Rowena.”  
  
Dumbledore wished Luna had chosen to sleep through this part. “That might explain why the fireball pulled her in. The quill was a sort of extension of her.”  
  
“It sang in a lady’s voice,” said Luna.  
  
“The strongest clue of all,” thought the present-day Dumbledore.  
  
Leonard took Luna’s hand in his again and gave Dumbledore the same expectant look that she had. “So what do you think, Professor?”  
  
“I think you have an extraordinary daughter,” said Dumbledore, twinkling at Luna with a cheering charm. “Other than that, I am sorry to say that I am even more perplexed than when we started.”  
  
Leonard heaved a great sigh.  
  
“I have her memory,” he said, putting the vial into his cloak, “and I will continue to examine it for clues, but I think there is some tiny detail, now obscured in Luna’s mind, which may be the key to it all. Perhaps, as she heals, it will come out naturally, but I am sure you agree – I must not press her any further now.”  
  
“Truth wills out,” Luna piped up. “The lady said so.” And then, in her high, childish voice, she sang the song which had come out of the quill.  
  
 _Ephemeral justice, elusive truth  
take time to be uncovered,  
but truth wills out in many years,  
and all will be discovered._  
  
Dumbledore, who had not expected her to fully comprehend him, was speechless for several moments. Finally, very softly, he said, “I look forward to meeting you again at happier occasions, Miss Lovegood. Hogwarts would be a very pleasant place to start.”


	29. Chapter 29

Dumbledore pulled himself out of the Pensieve. The quill - its song, that cackling laugh - all of it seemed to indicate that it had been a horcrux. And that magnetic pull that carried Rowena into the flame – he saw it very differently now. He might have been correct that the quill was an extension of Rowena, but that couldn’t have been all there was to it. The probability that some foreign soul had inhabited the quill also was seeming more and more likely. And when Rowena sought to destroy it, it pulled her right along with it.  
  
If all his conjectures were correct, then Tom was one step closer to defeat. But it was only conjecture. Until he had facts, he could not rule out the possibility that a Ravenclaw Horcrux was still hidden in the world, preserving the life of a genocidal murderer.  
  
It was imperative that he speak to Luna and try to trigger her memory. She was nearly sixteen now, and no longer a child, but it was still a delicate matter. He conceived of two possible approaches, and then went out to find her.  
  
Being rather less adventurous than Harry, it was easy to guess where she might be. Turning invisible, he moved a staircase over and took it to the Room of Requirement. Draco would be inside, of course, but Luna was outside, sitting on the floor with a book. Two first year girls were there, too, but as soon as he made himself visible, they scampered away.  
  
“Pity,” thought Dumbledore. “They have no reason to fear me.”  
  
Luna scrambled to her feet when she saw him. “Good morning, Professor Dumbledore.”  
  
“Good morning, Miss Lovegood. Were you waiting for a friend?”  
  
“Yes, sir,” she said, flushing a charming pink. Dumbledore was rather sorry to take her away from Neville, but there would be plenty of time for that later.  
  
“I hope you will not mind if I ask you to put off whatever plans you had for a little while and come speak to me in my office.”  
  
Many a student would be nervous at being called for a private conference with him. Harry was, his first time. But Luna simply said, “Of course, sir,” and followed him up the same staircase he’d just descended.  
  
Luna’s already protuberant eyes seemed to pop out as she surveyed his office. His aurameters, phantasmographs, spelloscillators, and ethereoscopes were all whirring away. Fawkes, at the peak of his life cycle, was preening his glorious crimson feathers on his perch. The portraits, with the exception of Armando Dippet’s, were all asleep in their frames. He was eyeing Luna, though she scarcely took notice of him. Her gaze traveled all around the room, and just as Dumbledore had hoped, she settled on the Pensieve. He sat down at his desk and motioned that she should sit opposite him.  
  
“I trust you understand the Rune engravings?”  
  
“Recollections of the past light the path to the future,” she translated.  
  
“Correct,” he said smiling. “It is called a Pensieve. You see, at the end of each day, I reflect on everything I experienced, and then preserve my memory in here. That way, I can revisit it whenever I need to.”  
  
“Like keeping a diary.”  
  
“Very much like it, but I do not write my memories into the Pensieve. I capture them this way.” He held his wand to his temple, allowed it to extract his thought, and then deposited the silvery substance into the Pensieve.  
  
“You did that to me when Mummy died,” she whispered.  
  
“And I preserved your memory in here, too, so that someday, seen alongside my experiences, the cause of her death might become clearer to me.”  
  
Luna’s own nine-year-old face rose to the surface. The present-day Luna turned away. It was not the time for the direct approach. He banished the Pensieve back to the cabinet.  
  
“Professor, I’m sorry. I _am_ grateful that you think of her and keep trying.”  
  
“I know you are, Luna. No need to apologize.” He twinkled a cheering charm over her, and tried his alternate plan. “Professor Firenze tells me that you gave an excellent accounting of the cloud formations at the Quidditch match.”  
  
The effect was immediate.  
  
“Professor Firenze heard me commentate?”  
  
“Oh, yes. I daresay he is as fascinated by human life as you are by centaurs.”  
  
“And he said I was _good_?”  
  
“Excellent, Miss Lovegood. To be perfectly precise, the word he used was ‘Excellent.’ He said he never understood Quidditch at all until your commentary.”  
  
Luna sat back in her chair, her face glowing. Firenze’s praise more than made up for the other students’ jeers. Then a sudden worry seized her.  
  
“Professor! What if the other centaurs heard me from the forest? Won’t that make them angrier – to actually hear a human using their arts?”  
  
“Our voice enhancing enchantments cannot carry that far, Luna. But I am glad to know that you appreciate the seriousness of the rift between Professor Firenze and his herd. He made a great sacrifice to come and teach here, and that is why I want to speak to you.”  
  
Puzzled by what this possibly had to do with her, Luna sat up attentively.  
  
“As I am sure you realize, Professor Firenze’s Divination classes are an anomaly in centaurian and wizarding history. Professor Firenze informs me it was all foretold, which places a check on any pride I might have taken for my role in it, but I am gratified to know that at least one student is reaping the benefit.”  
  
Yawning, Phineas’ portrait interrupted, “So then why do you persist in keeping that drunken fraud on your staff, Albus?”  
  
“Professor Trelawney is not a fraud!” cried Luna.  
  
“You’ve spoken disrespectfully to an elder, young lady,” said Armando. “And you’re out of turn, too. What would your grandmother say?”  
  
“If you’ll excuse us, gentlemen, one headmaster is quite enough for one student to face at a time.” With one long vertical swipe of his wand, Dumbledore drew a dark curtain over the portraits.  
  
“Sound proof,” he explained. “They can no longer hear us, and they will not disturb us again.”  
  
Luna glared at the curtain. “It isn’t fair to call Professor Trelawney a fraud even if she has let herself be influenced by the Helium Huckster.”  
  
Dumbledore could not help but smile at this delightful lapse into code, but as he combined the letters into different patterns in his mind, he was struck by its brilliance. In Teutonic, the word “huckster” worked out to “ego,” and “helium” must therefore mean “inflated.” But in Gaelic the entire phrase together had a different, though related meaning: “envy.”  
  
“Now that,” he said, “is truly a masterpiece. Your parents’ household codes always were my favorites. I imagine you were hearing stories about avoiding the Helium Huckster even when you were very little.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
Dumbledore chuckled. “Very well then, Luna. You continue avoiding that Helium Huckster. I need a student’s point of view, and yours will help better than anybody’s. Professor Trelawney has made it no secret that she considers Professor Firenze a rival, but the defense you just gave her indicates you’ve learned from both teachers. Could you describe for me the differences between studying under a human Seer and studying under a centaur?”  
  
Luna cocked her head as she considered the question. “I love Professor Firenze’s classes, but he can be very difficult to understand. I have to work hard at it. I go to the Astronomy Tower at night and I walk around the grounds in the daytime, looking for the patterns he showed us in class. It takes a very long time. But I was almost always alone last term, so I had the time.”  
  
Dumbledore swiftly rose from his desk and walked away to hide his reaction. How she could pierce his heart at times! Stopping at Fawkes’ perch, his back still toward her, he asked, “But that is changing for you now, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yes, sir. Professor Firenze said it would, and I’m very glad. As much as I love his classes, I love having friends more.”  
  
Dumbledore gave Fawkes a treat and returned to his chair.  
  
“But Professor Trelawney taught me so much,” she continued, eager to give her other teacher equal representation. “Especially in third year. But of course, you were the first one to teach me about premonitions.”  
  
If Dumbledore had not just seen it in his Pensieve, he might have forgotten that little detail. “All I taught you was a word for an experience you were already having.”  
  
“But that was very important for me,” she said, her eyes widening in her earnestness. “Until then, I didn’t understand they were a special kind of wrackspurts. And then with Professor Trelawney, I learned to control them a little and make them work when I wanted them to.”  
  
“So for you, learning Divination is very much like spell-casting. It’s just a matter of harnessing the power that is already there.”  
  
“Yes, sir. And that’s why I’m glad I had Professor Trelawney first. I don’t see how I could have learned that from anyone except another human.”  
  
He had been right. Nobody’s viewpoint could have helped him more.  
  
“You say you have achieved some control. I assume you mean you can control when you see but not necessarily what you see?”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“And past, present, and future being part of one continuum, am I correct that you’ve had visions of all three?”  
  
Luna thought about that for a moment. “I don’t think I see the present very well, sir.”  
  
Once again, he could not suppress a smile. “Luna, will you favor me with a reading?”  
  
“Oh!”  
  
“Ah, the delectable irony,” thought Dumbledore. "She did not foresee that I would ask her.  
  
“Still avoiding the Helium Huckster?” he teased.  
  
The joke was lost on her. She began twisting her fingers in her lap.  
  
“Come now, dear girl, why so nervous? I have faith in you. Choose a tool for yourself. What will it be? Runes stones? Tarot cards? Crystal ball? I own them all, though I do not use them myself.”  
  
He sighed. It was because he owned more than he needed that he had invented the Tillhiasit charm in the first place.  
  
“Crystal ball, please. But, sir, I don’t always get results, and even when I do, I don’t always understand them.”  
  
“This is not your O.W.L. exam. No pressure at all.”  
  
The pressure should all be on him.  
  
He summoned the crystal ball for her. She looked up at him, studied his face a moment, and then gazed into the crystal ball. After many minutes, she began to speak.  
  
“I see a lady sleeping. She looks like . . . She is! It’s my Granny, only she’s young! I never knew how much Mummy looked like her! I don’t think I have ever seen this far back in the past before – to a time before I was born.”  
  
Dumbledore could not have dreamed of better results. “I think that because you are doing the reading for me, you can see within my lifetime.”  
  
Excited at the novelty of seeing her very own grandmother in her youth, Luna began to describe the room. “There’s a huge stack of books and papers – those must be her translations, and a robe hung over the door. And now there’s a man in her room, tiptoeing around so she will not wake up. It must be my grandfather!”  
  
“What does he look like?”  
  
“Dark-haired . . . and handsome.”  
  
“And bearded?”  
  
“No, no beard. He’s searching for something.”  
  
Dumbledore was on the edge of his seat. “Luna, look away from the crystal ball and into my eyes, but all the while, keep that man’s image in your mind.”  
  
Luna obeyed, and when Dumbledore saw what she saw, his insides ran cold. It was Tom Riddle.  
  
“That was not your grandfather,” he said grimly. “I am afraid it may have been a burglar.”  
  
“But Professor, didn’t you fix it that nobody could ever steal from Granny? Whatever that man took – wouldn’t it have gone back to her eventually?”  
  
That cut him to the quick. It was one thing to suspect his miscalculation, but quite another to hear it from her own mouth.  
  
“Yes, Luna,” he said somberly. “Whatever he took would have returned itself to her. Look back into the orb now. Perhaps you will catch the end of the vision.”  
  
Luna lowered her eyes, waited a few moments, and shook her head. “The vision is gone, sir.”  
  
“My accursed impatience,” Dumbledore chastised himself. “If I had waited, she might have seen more.”  
  
“I’ll keep looking, sir,” said Luna. She did not understand his frustration, but she was anxious to relieve it. “Something will come.”  
  
And indeed something did. Her face froze up in horror. Quickly, he summoned a few gurdyroots from his shelves and thrust them into her hands. Surprised, she looked up.  
  
“Your mother?” he asked gently.  
  
She nodded.  
  
“I am very, very sorry. The last thing I wanted was for you to have a vision that would distress you.”  
  
What he had hoped for was a vision a few minutes earlier, _before_ the death.  
  
“It happens to me sometimes,” she murmured.  
  
“I should have realized. But please understand, I have a good reason for putting you through all this. I would not do it if it were not of the utmost importance.”  
  
Luna nodded. The pain and fear were subsiding from her eyes. The gurdyroots were working their magic.  
  
“If I told you that as long as you held those roots in your hands, you would have a happy vision, would you believe me?”  
  
“I believe everything you say, sir.”  
  
Oh, such pure confidence and trust! Did he deserve it after what he might have cost her, albeit inadvertently? All he could do for her now was to make her world a little sunnier.  
  
“You _will_ have a happy vision,” he told her. “Now, will you try again for me?”  
  
She looked back down at the crystal ball. This time, the vision came to her instantly.  
  
“I see an old lady. I’ve seen her before, but I can’t place where. She’s very happy. She’s smiling and she’s even got happy tears in her eyes.”  
  
“Lift your eyes to mine as you did before. Keep the vision in mind. There we are.”  
  
What he saw nearly brought happy tears to his eyes, too. It was Augusta Longbottom.  
  
“I think I know what that means. I am not a Seer, but I would venture to guess that the lady is smiling because she loves you.”  
  
Luna cocked her head thoughtfully again. Dumbledore assumed she was trying to remember where she might have seen Augusta – King’s Cross station, surely, only with her hat on. But his ruse had worked perfectly on her Ravenclaw mind. She was still thinking about Divination classes. “Professor, who will I have next year at N.E.W.T. level?”  
  
“Whom would you prefer to have?”  
  
He was glad the portraits were still behind the curtain. Otherwise, he would have been treated to a litany of advice about the foolhardiness of giving students too much power of choice.  
  
Luna shook her head. “I can’t decide. I like both.”  
  
“Both? I think we will come to some sort of acceptable arrangement, then. Perhaps two private tutorials. Thank you very much, Luna. You’ve been of great help.”  
  
She was glowing again, pleased to have helped the headmaster, though she had no idea how valuable she actually had been. He would have to interview her again, of course, but he would give it some time. He needed Horace’s memory first and foremost in any case.  
  
“And now I must ask you for two more things. First, please do not share with anyone at Hogwarts what we discussed here today. If you feel the need to talk about it, you may write to your father, but that is all. As you can well imagine, I do not want any of this getting back to the wrong parties.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“And second,” he said, taking Harry’s note out of his desk and folding it, “would you please bring this to Harry Potter?”  
  
Luna put down the gurdyroots to take the note from him.  
  
“You may keep those,” he told her, summoning some crantiary gravel to his desk. “Store them with the gravel for freshness.”  
  
Luna put the note, the gravel, and the gurdyroots into her bag. “Professor, what are these please?”  
  
“Gurdyroots,” he said, twinkling at her. “Excellent for warding off Gulping Plimpies.”  
  
He walked her to the door, watching her wheels turn as she tried to work out the code. She’d need quill and parchment for a code that intricate, but for her sake he hoped she’d learn about the gurdyroots by a simpler and more enjoyable method – by running across Neville and asking him.


	30. Chapter 30

The sun was setting over the lake, and Luna and Neville were enjoying it together. Luna had finished the last of her O.W.L.s that afternoon and was telling Neville everything she could remember writing about how the goblins were relegated into the financial services of wizadry.  
  
“I don’t know how you can stand it,” said Neville. “After I’ve taken an exam, I don’t ever want to _think_ about it again.”  
  
“Everyone in Ravenclaw goes over their answers afterward,” said Luna. “There are some people who never speak to me at all except before and after a Runes exam.”  
  
Instinctively, she checked her Galleon bracelet. It had been six months since Professor Firenze told her that her lonely days were ending, but that particular habit seemed to have stuck. The strange thing was, for the first time in over a year, the Galleon was lighting up.  
  
“Neville?” she said in mild alarm.  
  
He’d felt his heating up in his pocket. He pulled it out, and in clear letters at the top shone the words, “GRYFFINDOR COMMON ROOM. NOW.”  
  
“Let’s go!” said Neville.  
  
In an instant, the two were off and running. They passed Professor Dumbledore on the way, who waved to them. They waved back.  
  
“It’s because he’s leaving that Harry called us,” thought Luna.  
  
Ginny, Ron, and Hermione were waiting for them.  
  
“We’re so glad you came!” said Ginny.  
  
“You’re the only ones who did,” said Hermione.  
  
But neither Luna nor Neville needed their thanks. They were there to help because in these times, everyone’s help was indispensable.  
  
“We saw Dumbledore leave,” Neville told them.  
  
Ginny lowered her voice to a whisper, “Harry’s gone with him.”  
  
“Shhh!” said Ron. He pointed his wand at the door and said, “Muffilato.” To Luna and Neville, he explained, “It causes buzzing in the ears of anyone passing by.”  
  
“You shouldn’t use that spell,” Hermione reprimanded.  
  
“Give it a rest for now, won’t you? We’ve got a job to do.”  
  
“Harry’s asked us to keep an eye on Malfoy and Snape,” said Ginny. “He thinks Malfoy’s up to something.”  
  
“Of course he is,” said Luna.  
  
Hermione and Ron looked at each other in surprise.  
  
“All right. First things first,” said Ron, pulling out a vial of yellow liquid from a pair of socks. “Everyone drink a little, and mind you leave over for everybody else.”  
  
“What is it?” asked Neville as Ron took the first sip.  
  
“Felix Felicis,” said Hermione. “It’s for luck.”  
  
She took a sip and passed it to Ginny, who took a sip and passed it to Luna. Luna did her best to leave some for Neville, but being the last to receive the vial, his dose was the smallest.  
  
“Kind of takes the edge off the nerves, doesn’t it?” said Ron.  
  
“It feels like having premonitions, but with more certainty,” agreed Luna.  
  
“Let’s see the map,” said Ginny.  
  
Ron pulled out an old bit of parchment with a complete map of Hogwarts on it. It was really something to look at – it had all their names on it, and marked off secret passageways into the school, each of which was being guarded by a member of the Order. Luna would have loved to study it longer, but it was not the time for it.  
  
“Malfoy’s not on, so you know what that means,” said Ron.  
  
“It means he’s in the Room of Requirement,” said Luna.  
  
Again, Ron and Hermione exchanged looks of surprise.  
  
“Right,” said Hermione. “Well, I guess it’s obvious to all of us what we need to do. Luna and I will go down to the dungeons, and you three go up to the Room of Requirement.”  
  
“Good luck,” said Luna, her eyes on Neville. Under any other circumstance, she would have wanted to stay with him, but the Felix Felicis told her this was the best possible arrangement.  
  
“We’ll be all right,” said Ginny, reassuring herself as much as the others. “We’ve all had Felix.”  
  
The two groups went their separate ways.  
  
“How did you know that Malfoy was in the Room of Requirement?” Hermione asked once they got to the dungeons.  
  
And then Luna understood why she had been paired with Hermione. At long last, the time had arrived to teach her about _The Quibbler_. Never without a copy, Luna pulled the most recent issue out from the inside of her robe and unrolled it. She held it upside-down, right under Hermione’s nose, and pointed to Professor Dumbledore’s own encoded words.  
  
 _Draco Malfoy has gone to great pains in the past year to hide his activities, mostly using the secrecy afforded him by the Room of Requirement. It is absolutely certain, however, that he is getting outside help. On two occasions, he has successfully evaded our watch and wrought real, though temporary, damage upon Hogwarts students. For that reason alone I contend it is safer to keep him on our side, but I wish it for his sake at least as much. As anyone observing him will see, the path he is currently pursuing is tantamount to a suicide mission._  
  
Hermione finished reading and looked up at Luna in amazement. “It’s all in Runes . . . it’s . . .”  
  
Luna pointed to another article about Death Eater bribery within Scrimegour’s personal staff, and then another about the last known whereabouts of Voldemort himself.  
  
Hermione read, re-read, and then looked up at Luna.  
  
“Daddy’s very clever, isn’t he?” said Luna.  
  
Hermione stared at her, open-mouthed. For once, she was at a loss for words. But it didn’t last long. She seemed to struggle with herself and then pointed her wand at Professor Snape’s door and said, “Muffilato!”  
  
Luna smiled. “Professor Snape knows all about _The Quibbler_. In fact, he’s one of its best contributors. I don’t quite understand why we’re down here guarding his door, but the potion tells me that we should be.”  
  
“Professor Snape contributes? And Professor Dumbledore – and who else?”  
  
“Well, Professor Dumbledore really is the heart of it. My Dad is in charge of coding, production, and distribution, so he gets to keep the profits, but nothing goes into _The Quibbler_ without Professor Dumbledore’s approval. Harry’s interview was sort of an exception. Daddy’s always wanted to thank you for that.”  
  
“Me? But I didn’t even know what I was doing!”  
  
“No, you didn’t quite judge Daddy fairly. But he forgives you. After all, most people don’t look at _The Quibbler_ from the right angle. That’s why it’s so effective.”  
  
Hermione shook her head. “How long has your Dad been doing this?”  
  
“Mum and Dad had _The Quibbler_ even before they had me.”  
  
“Your mother was part of it, too?”  
  
“Yes, of course,” said Luna, “and she pointed to the dedication which appeared on every issue since Mummy’s death. “ _In memoriam, Rowena Rockrimmon Lovegood_.”  
  
“Rockrimmon? Like Sophie Rockrimmon, the Runes writer?”  
  
“She was my Granny.”  
  
“Luna, that’s . . . and all this time, I thought . . . I’m so sorry, Luna.”  
  
“It’s quite all right. I’m glad you know the truth, actually. I’ve been waiting to tell you a very long time. Ginny knows. Dad covered the Chamber of Secrets incident, you see.”  
  
“I thought her parents kept that away from the press.”  
  
“They made an exception for _The Quibbler_."  
  
“Well, Ron doesn’t know about it. Nor Harry.”  
  
“No. Professor Dumbledore has kept Harry away from the press, too, as much as he could, anyway. He says that’s best for Harry.”  
  
“What about the prophecy? Has _The Quibbler_ reported about that?”  
  
“Whatever Professor Dumbledore knows about it, he hasn’t told Dad, and there’s no sense in speculating. It’s really very foolish of _The Prophet_ to try.”  
  
Inwardly, Luna triumphed a little. The potion told her that Hermione was reconsidering her news subscriptions.  
  
“But what about the Death Eaters?” she asked. “Surely some of them could break these codes.”  
  
Luna nodded. “Daddy has to vary the codes all the time because of that. Some are Gaelic, some are Teutonic. Sometimes they require letter-scrambling, and sometimes, they’re plain symbols, but again, you have to look at them from the right angle. The biggest protection of all is that Daddy is Muggle-born. Most of the Death Eaters wouldn’t bother reading him for that reason alone.”  
  
Being Muggle-born herself, Hermione frowned. “I’m just as guilty,” she whispered. “I thought . . .”  
  
“I told you Daddy forgives you. Don’t you see? Harry’s interview put new life into _The Quibbler_. Most people stopped reading years and years ago, even before Mummy passed. And then afterward, it was worse. People started saying that Daddy lost his mind. Daddy said it was a good cover, but he lost most of his core readers, too . . .”  
  
Luna’s voice trailed off, and a terrible sadness gripped her. She felt the old familiar longing for Mummy. She felt for poor Neville whose parents really had lost their minds. But there was more; she knew it. It was a premonition – her own, not a result of the potion. Something terrible was going to happen. She and Hermione would be safe where they were, but there was going to be something, some sort of loss, some unbearable pain.  
  
Luna knew better than to share these feelings with Hermione. Runes coding was an art she could appreciate, but premonitions were purely a matter of faith. So she sat and watched as Hermione pored over _The Quibbler_ , looking up now and again to say with a sigh, “I wonder what’s happening with everyone.”  
  
Confirmation to Luna’s worst worries came in the form of a panicked Professor Flitwick. He ran right past them and into Professor Snape’s office, pleading for his help because Death Eaters had entered the school and set the Dark Mark over the Astronomy Tower. Luna and Hermione stared at each other in horror, and then they heard a big thud. Professor Snape swept out of his office.  
  
“Professor Flitwick has collapsed. You go in and make him comfortable. Do not,” he turned to Hermione, “try and ennervate him. He’s in no state for battle.” He turned to Luna. “And if anyone comes by, concoct a story and run them off.”  
  
With that, he turned, his wand at the ready, and raced upstairs.  
  
Luna and Hermione went into his office. Hermione conjured a couch for Professor Flitwick and Luna levitated him onto it. Away from the thick of the battle, all they could do was sit and wait.  
  
After a long while, Professor McGonagall, followed by Tonks, found them. Both had torn clothes, disheveled hair, and scratches on their skin, but Professor McGonagall was as controlled and commanding as ever. She walked over to Professor Flitwick’s couch and looked him over.  
  
“You’ve done well, girls. Tonks will take you upstairs now.”  
  
But Hermione was not going that quickly. “Professor?” she asked. “The Dark Mark?”  
  
“I have found everyone alive so far,” she replied curtly.  
  
Her choice of words made Luna shiver. The battle was over, but the damage not thoroughly assessed yet.  
  
“There have been injuries,” she went on, her voice beginning to quaver. “Neville took a few blows, but he should be all right. And Bill Weasley,” - Tonks let out a sob – “was bit by Fenrir Greyback.”  
  
Luna and Hermione gasped.  
  
“But it’s not the full moon,” said Hermione, “so . . .”  
  
“Nobody knows what will happen to him,” said Tonks.  
  
There was a long, solemn pause.  
  
“Take them upstairs, Nymphadora,” said Professor McGonagall. “I want everyone safe and together in one place.”  
  
They followed Tonks up to the hospital wing. Neville, lying unconscious in a bed in a far corner, caught Luna’s eye first, but when she looked over at the mangled face of Bill Weasley, she was grateful for that little bit of Felix Felicis that had protected Neville from a much worse fate.  
  
“Where’s Ginny?” Hermione asked.  
  
“Getting Harry,” croaked Ron, staring at his brother. Appalling a sight as it was, he could not tear his eyes away.  
  
Harry and Ginny came in shortly afterward, and they delivered the news – the reason for Luna’s premonition. Professor Dumbledore was dead. And Professor Snape had killed him.  
  
It was altogether too terrible to think about. A world without Professor Dumbledore! How could they carry on without him? Surely he would guide them from beyond, but would they be receptive enough to hear him?  
  
The answer came unbidden to Luna. “We will hear him because we love him.”  
  
And at that very moment, a song rose up in the distance – Professor Dumbledore’s phoenix singing a lament. It was curiously comforting, much in the same way that the quill’s song was comforting. Luna, along with everyone else, stood in rapt silence, listening to the mournful cry echoing across Hogwarts and reverberating inside of her.  
  
Because Neville had slept through all of it, Luna took it on herself to break the news to him the next day. After breakfast, she went back to the hospital wing where Neville still lay asleep. Humming the phoenix song so that he would be eased into the news, she sat and waited for him to awaken.  
  
“Ohhhh,” he moaned.  
  
“Madam Pomfrey?” called Luna.  
  
Neville stretched and sat up. His every move was a strain. He looked around, took in where he was, and smiled at Luna. “Thanks for coming.”  
  
Madam Pomfrey walked over, so Luna left the room. After a few minutes, Neville called her back.  
  
“How do you feel?” she asked.  
  
“All right,” he said, wincing as he reached for the breakfast tray Madam Pomfrey had given him. Neville, the quiet hero. It was just like him to minimize his pain.  
  
He pointed to the curtain around Bill Weasley. “I saw the attack,” he whispered. “How is he? Is he going to be a werewolf?”  
  
“Professor Lupin didn’t think so,” she whispered back.  
  
Luna hummed a little of the phoenix song. Neville stopped eating. Already, he sensed it coming.  
  
“Professor Dumbledore was killed in battle,” she said softly.  
  
Neville turned his face to the side to hide his tears. Luna looked down at her hands. She would let him mourn a little before telling him the worst of it. She sang more of the phoenix song. Even Madam Pomfrey stepped out of her station to listen.  
  
Neville dried his eyes with the back of his hand. “How can we possibly win this without him?”  
  
“We have to,” said Luna.  
  
Neville looked up at her. “You know, he still visited my parents. So many people – my Mum’s own family – just turned their backs and forgot. But he never did.”  
  
Luna nodded. She thought of the Pensieve he had shown her. He never forgot Mummy either.  
  
“And sometimes, he’d see me alone and he’d award me points because he said I was laboring under heavier burdens than almost anyone in school.”  
  
“He did that for me sometimes, too,” said Luna. She hummed a little more phoenix song. “Neville, there’s something else. Professor Snape was the one who killed him. Harry saw it.”  
  
Neville gave a sudden jump that caused him a big spasm of pain. He swore, then apologized, and said, “The last thing I remember was Harry chasing Snape. Did he get away?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
They sat together in silence for a long while. Luna did not know what to think. Dad knew Professor Snape in school. Dad said he was easily the cleverest wizard in their year, and that year produced some of the greatest wizards Dad had ever known. But even back then, Snape more than just dabbled on the Dark Side, so people kept their distance, all except for Professor Dumbledore. He saw value in befriending that sort of wizard, especially one as clever as Professor Snape. How could Professor Dumbledore, with his vast wisdom, have been so deceived?  
  
Neville remained in the hospital wing for nearly a week. Luna visited him every day, and always for several hours at a time. He had to argue with Madam Pomfrey to be allowed to attend the funeral, but she relented when Luna promised to stay beside him throughout it and get him whatever he needed. He winced as she helped him into his chair, but she didn’t realize right away it wasn’t only because of physical pain.  
  
“I just saw my Gran a few rows behind us,” he said. “I didn’t want her to see me like this.”  
  
“But you knew she wouldn’t miss the funeral,” said Luna.  
  
Neville shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it. He could be very sloppy in his thinking sometimes.  
  
“I wrote to her that my injuries were really nothing – and they are – but she’ll kick up a right fuss when she gets the chance.”  
  
“She was proud of you last time we fought the Death Eaters,” Luna reminded him. “Perhaps she will be now, too.”  
  
Neville shrugged again, but before he could answer, the procession began. Hagrid carried Professor Dumbledore’s body through the crowd while the merpeople sang a sad, beautiful melody. A wave of tears overtook everybody, and Luna and Neville were swept right along with it. When the body passed their row, Luna stood up out of respect, but she was the only one of the students who did it.  
  
A speaker began delivering a eulogy, and though Luna tried listening, the speaker seemed to have no feeling for the circumstances. Professor Dumbledore’s presence was flitting around, trying to cheer people up. Harry Potter felt it. Sometimes, he would look up, almost smiling. She imagined Professor Dumbledore telling him a joke from the beyond, just the way her mother had said “I love you,” so many times when she was mourning.  
  
Luna thought of her fondest memory of Professor Dumbledore – when he had come to her house to console her after her mother’s death. He had to question her then, too, which could have been as bad the accident itself, but Professor Dumbledore made certain it would not be. Nobody else could have helped her through such a horrible time with such gentleness and respect.  
  
She thought of her recent visit to his office. How glad she was now to have had that opportunity! If only she could have gone again. Perhaps she might have been braver about the Pensieve. What a repository of wisdom it must be, with all his life’s experiences inside it! And to think, he’d put her memory of Mummy’s accident into it and continued to revisit it even at the end of his own life. How many mysteries had he solved that way? How many more remained unsolved?  
  
At the end of the speech, they watched the completion of Professor Dumbledore’s entry into the next realm. Many of the other students jumped, never having seen anything like it before. Neither Neville nor Luna flinched.  
  
“Goodbye for now,” Luna whispered, a tear running down her cheek. “I’ll miss you.”  
  
Slowly the crowd began to thin out, and when Neville saw that his grandmother was deep in conversation with Professor McGonagall, he let Luna help him out of his chair. While they were waiting, Neville’s eyes strayed toward Ginny, who was sitting with Harry Potter. He’d made peace with the idea of them, but he still liked her. Luna couldn’t really blame him. She liked Ginny, too. It was pretty much the way Neville felt about Harry.  
  
When somebody called Professor McGonagall away from his grandmother, Neville said, “I . . .uh . . . guess I’ll introduce you.”  
  
Luna understood why he was reluctant. He was afraid she’d say something that sounded odd to untrained ears.  
  
“He still underestimates me,” she thought, “even now.”  
  
They passed through several rows of empty chairs to reach Neville’s grandmother. She was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, but as soon as she saw Neville limp, she burst into tears again. “Oh, Neville, you told me your injuries were minor!”  
  
“They are,” said Neville. And then hastily, as if to avoid an argument, he said, “Gran, this is my friend Luna Lovegood. She’s in Ravenclaw. She just finished her fifth year.”  
  
“Very nice to meet you, dear. Too bad it’s at such a sad occasion.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” agreed Luna.  
  
“Now that’s what I like to see - a young girl with manners,” said Mrs. Longbottom. “I noticed you stood up when they carried Albus past you.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Young people just don’t do things like that anymore,” said Mrs. Longbottom. “Lovegood you say? Your father runs _The Quibbler_?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“My son used to subscribe.”  
  
Neville didn’t look entirely comfortable with this information, but Luna smiled.  
  
“You should come and visit Neville over the summer,” Mrs. Longbottom went on.  
  
Neville didn’t look particularly comfortable with that, either.  
  
“Doesn’t he want to see me?” thought Luna in dismay.  
  
But in the next moment, Neville’s warm brown eyes were looking into hers reassuringly. “I’ll send you an owl,” he said. “We’ll get together soon.”  
  
And then, hobbling along slowly, Neville and his grandmother headed out of Hogwarts. As they walked away, Luna realized it. Neville’s grandmother was the very same lady she had seen in Professor Dumbledore’s crystal ball.  
  
Luna turned around to look for her father in the row reserved for press wizards. He spotted her instantly, and they walked toward each other.  
  
He clutched her to him tightly. “My sweetie. Oh, my precious Luna,” he said over and over again.  
  
But Luna wasn’t feeling so sad anymore. She had an invitation to Neville’s and she knew Professor Dumbledore was happy for her, even if he had exaggerated about Neville’s grandmother.  
  
Suddenly, Professor Dumbledore’s spirit felt very close to her. It was the strongest, clearest message she’d had from him yet, and she hadn’t expected to get any more after the completion ceremony. But he was near her and happy – laughing, even. And most of all, he was certain that he’d neither exaggerated nor been mistaken about Mrs. Longbottom.


	31. Chapter 31

Professor McGonagall had arranged for all Neville’s things to be packed while he was in the hospital wing, Trevor and the _Mimbulus mimbletonia_ included. Mr. Striplett, a neighbor of Gran’s who owned an imported flying carpet, offered them a lift home after the funeral. For Neville, it was a great relief. If Gran was going to chew him out for lying to her about his injuries, at least it wouldn’t happen somewhere more public, like on the Knight Bus. But Gran and Mr. Striplett spent the ride reminiscing about Dumbledore. Neville sat quietly with a tight grip on Trevor and looked out at the passing countryside. Gran was saving it all until they got home.  
  
The carpet touched down lightly at their doorstep.  
  
“Need help with that trunk?” asked Mr. Striplett. Without waiting for an answer, he levitated it into the house.  
  
“Thank you for everything” said Gran.  
  
“Not at all, Mrs. Longbottom. If you need anything, just let me know. And welcome home to you, young man.” Mr. Startlett tipped his hat, levitated the carpet again, and in an instant, had flown out of sight.  
  
“The garden looks good,” said Neville.  
  
Gran didn’t answer. She looked exhausted. She went into the house and sank into a chair.  
  
Neville followed her in. “I guess I’ll go unpack,” he said. He took a few steps toward his room, but doubled back. He might as well just get it over with.  
  
“All right, I’m sorry I lied. I was only trying to spare you some worry. And Madam Pomfrey really did say I’d be fine.”  
  
Gran just sat there looking at him. Then she burst into tears. “How can I bear this? What if I lose you, too? And you’ll go running into battle again – it’s inevitable. You’ve become just like Dad.”  
  
“Did I hear right?” wondered Neville. “Did she just say what I thought she said?”  
  
Leaning into her handkerchief, Gran sobbed louder and harder. Neville knelt beside her chair and squeezed her hand. She cried for a little while longer, then looked up at him and patted his cheek.  
  
“You’re a good boy, Neville. I’m proud of you. Never let me make you think otherwise.”  
  
“It’s all right, Gran. I know.”  
  
“You’re lying to spare my feelings again. I don’t deserve it. I’m an old battleaxe and we both know it.”  
  
Gran dried her eyes. She was getting back to herself.  
  
“Look at you. You’re wondering what in the name of Merlin has gotten into me. Well, let me tell you a little something about how funerals affect old people. They remind us that our time is running out. And then we get to thinking about what _really_ matters.” She fixed him with one of her accusing looks. “You never told me you had a girlfriend, Neville.”  
  
“I don’t!”  
  
“What about that Lovegood girl?”  
  
“She’s just a school friend.”  
  
“Really!”  
  
“How about some jackaroo tea, Gran? It’ll make you feel better.”  
  
“Don’t change the subject. Do you think your old Gran doesn’t understand about girls? I used to be one, you know. And I can tell, that girl is sweet on you.”  
  
“I – um – I’ll go get the tea leaves,” he said, hobbling outside.  
  
But not being fully recovered from his injuries, it was easy for Gran to keep up with him. She followed him right outside. “I’ll tell you something else, too. I know a little about her family. Your Mum and hers were once very close friends. I suppose that’s why Dad subscribed to their magazine, sort of a social obligation. But of course, that wouldn’t be a very nice thing to repeat to your friend. Luna is it?”  
  
“Yes, Gran,” said Neville, going back inside with the jackaroo leaves. She followed him inside.  
  
“Her mother was a lovely person. The only one of Mum’s friends who kept visiting, which is more than I can say for your dear uncle Darius.”  
  
For once, Neville would have welcomed a rant about “dear uncle Darius,” who was about as dear to him as the snack-cart witch on the Hogwarts Express. Was this how things would be with Gran from now on? Now that she’d finally acknowledged she was proud of him, was she branching out into new turf - advising him about girls? It wasn’t much of an improvement. He put a kettle on the stove.  
  
“Her mother died in some sort of spell accident. They say her father was never the same afterward. But Luna seems to take after her mother. I watched the way she helped you get around at the funeral. She’s not just another pretty face, though she does have a very pretty face.”  
  
The kettle whistled and Neville poured the tea. His hands were so shaky, he nearly burned himself.  
  
Yeah, Luna was pretty. Yeah, Luna liked him. A lot. Yeah, she had a big heart. Gran hadn’t seen the half of it, what with all those hours in the hospital wing. He didn’t mind Luna coming to visit – he probably would have invited her himself. But even still, the snorkacks and leezetuggers and things _were_ a problem.  
  
“You both need to settle in at home first,” said Gran, “but something tells me you’re going to start missing her in a few days’ time.”  
  
And though Neville wouldn’t dare raise Gran’s suspicions by admitting it, after a week of gardening and listening to the wireless, visiting Mum and Dad and Uncle Algie and Auntie Enid, he did miss Luna. He sent her an owl, and she arrived by Floo the very next day.  
  
“Hi,” he said, greeting her shyly.  
  
“Hello,” said Luna. To Gran, she said, “You have a lovely house.”  
  
“Thank you, dear. It’s small, but it suits us. Neville, why don’t you show her your garden?”  
  
Neville nodded. It was exactly where he wanted to be. Gran wasn’t one for sitting outside. He led Luna through the rows, showing off his herbs and plants with pride.  
  
“I recognize the jackaroo and the vervain,” said Luna, “but not everything.”  
  
“I like to grow Muggle herbs at home. They don’t have magical powers, of course, but they taste good.”  
  
“They smell nice, too,” said Luna.  
  
“Wanna sit outside?”  
  
“Oh, yes!”  
  
He showed her to the chairs in the center of the garden. He’d left his farmer’s almanac in one of them. He picked it up, put it on the little table between the chairs, but in doing so, the gum wrapper he’d been using as a bookmark slipped out. She caught it and said, “Look at _this_!”  
  
“It’s just a gum wrapper,” said Neville.  
  
“But look at how it’s creased!”  
  
“Yeah, well, that’s my Mum. She’s always folding up little bits of paper and giving them to me. This time it’s a gum wrapper. Sometimes she tears little bits out of magazines. Gran thinks I should chuck them, but I never do.”  
  
Luna kept staring at the gum wrapper. “Oh, Neville!” she cried.  
  
“What?” he said, nervously.  
  
“She loves you!”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Your mother.”  
  
Neville was utterly baffled.  
  
“It’s all here in Runes,” she said, shaking the gum wrapper. She held it upside-down in front of him. “You see how she folded it? The creases form the Runes symbol for ‘love.’ And then she made one more crease below the letter ‘N.’ And ‘N’ is for Neville, of course.”  
  
Neville looked closely at the gum wrapper. Except for the crease below the ‘N,’ he couldn’t see what Luna was talking about. It sounded absolutely bizarre. But what if she was right?  
  
“Hang on a minute, Luna.” He ran into the house, into his room, and took down one of the many boxes containing papers he’d gotten from Mum. He ran back outside.  
  
“Can you read these?”  
  
She pulled out a few gum wrappers. “Yes, look, they’re all the same. All but this one. That has the Runes symbol for ‘pride.’ She must have been saying she was proud of you.”  
  
Neville laid the wrappers out in a row and examined them. They really did look the same, all except for the one that Luna said was different. Or was it just wishful thinking?  
  
He pulled out a bit of torn magazine. “How about this one?”  
  
“Oh, my!” she gasped.  
  
“What?!”  
  
“It’s a distress signal. And look at the letters she creased. B-O-D-E. That’s the name of the Unspeakable who was killed last year.”  
  
“You mean the one who was strangled by Devil’s Snare?”  
  
Luna nodded. “She must have been trying to save him.”  
  
Neville’s heart was racing. “Mum won the Herbology award when she was in school. If she really was healthy and normal after all, then she could easily have recognized it.” He could barely believe it. Mum - well after all these years. Dad, too, perhaps. But then doubt struck him.  
  
“Why would she leave notes like this? That’s not the way to get rid of Devil’s Snare.”  
  
“You forget. She doesn’t have a wand.”  
  
“She could have warned a Healer. She can’t speak, of course, but she could have tapped one on the shoulder or pointed or something.”  
  
“Perhaps she tried those things and nobody bothered to listen.”  
  
Neville could picture it. Hadn’t Mum pointed and motioned to things hundreds of times only to be ignored? But it wasn’t just their fault; it couldn’t be. Sometimes she really did seem insane. Perhaps she was only half-mad. Or perhaps . . .  
  
“They’re undercover,” Neville whispered. “If the Death Eaters knew they hadn’t permanently incapacitated Mum and Dad, they’d go after them all over again.”  
  
“I think you’re right,” said Luna.  
  
Neville sat in stunned silence. Now that he knew this, what should he do next? He had loads of questions for Mum and Dad. Should he tell Gran? Probably not. Mum and Dad hadn’t.  
  
“Luna, we’ve got to keep this a secret.”  
  
“I wouldn’t tell a soul,” she said seriously. “And now, I want to give you a present.”  
  
Just like Luna to change the subject at the weirdest possible moment! She put a copy of _The Quibbler_ in his lap. Then she handed him a pair of those ridiculous multi-colored glasses.  
  
“Read it. With the Spectrespecs. And from the right angle.”  
  
The right angle? What did she mean? Neville looked down at a headline which said “KNEAZLE GENIUS THAT READS AND WRITES.” Uncertainly, he turned the magazine upside-down. Then he hesitated over putting on the glasses.  
  
“Oh, well,” he decided. “Our nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away.”  
  
He read the article. It was all about the enchantments around Hogwarts that had to be recast since Dumbledore’s passing.  
He looked up at Luna.  
  
“What do you think?” she asked.  
  
Neville flipped a page to another article, “BIZZYANITIS FELLS ANOTHER ANNOUNCER AT STATION WIZ.” He read the article.  
  
“Draco Malfoy is Blizzie the Weather Witch?” said Neville. He tried to stop himself. He covered his mouth with his hand, but his laughter came out in spitting noises.  
  
“I’m sorry. I know it’s a serious matter, but . . .” He laughed some more.  
  
“ _The Quibbler_ is meant to be funny sometimes. Professor Dumbledore liked that especially.”  
  
“Dumbledore knew about it?”  
  
“Professor Dumbledore helped Mummy and Daddy found it.” She pointed to some small print on the bottom, “ _In memoriam: Professor Albus Dumbledore and Rowena Rockrimmon Lovegood_.”  
  
“Your Mum?”  
  
“Yes. You can take off the Spectrespecs now. They don’t work for every article in every issue, but they’ll work for most of these.”  
  
Neville took off the glasses and smiled and Luna. “But this is great! Mum and Dad are normal, and so are you!”  
  
“How kind of you to say so!” said Luna archly. She turned her head from him.  
  
“Luna’s prickly side,” he thought gloomily. Here they’d been getting on so well for so many months, and just when they ought to be reaching a new level, he’d gone and gotten her angry. He tried formulating an apology in his mind, but it was too late. She was already crying.  
  
“I know you never called me that hateful name, but you thought it!”  
  
Of course, he knew exactly what she meant. He felt terrible. But she wasn’t being entirely fair, either.  
  
“C’mon, Luna. You can’t blame me for falling for your act.”  
  
“It’s not an act! Yes, I can tell the difference between reality and code, but I’ll have you know, code expresses reality a lot better than plain English sometimes. I wish more people would speak it. The world makes more sense Mum and Dad’s way! And just so you know, I sometimes hear voices, too - voices most people can’t hear - and that doesn’t make me insane.” She cried some more.  
  
Neville didn’t know what to say. He got up off his chair, knelt down in the grass, and pulled up a gurdyroot. He pressed it into her hand.  
  
“Please stop crying, Luna. If you don’t, Gran’ll think I haven’t been a gentleman.”  
  
Luna laughed through her tears. “If there’s one thing you are, Neville, it’s a gentleman. I forgive you.” She dried her eyes.  
  
“That’s one fast-acting gurdyroot,” thought Neville. But for added measure, he said, “Let’s go inside. I’ll make you some jackaroo tea.”  
  
“Don’t forget your things,” said Luna, pointing to his box of Mum’s notes and the copy of _The Quibbler_.  
  
“Right!” he said. He pulled off a few jackaroo leaves, ran into the house, and whisked the box and the magazine into his room. When he returned to the kitchen, Gran and Luna were sitting at the table together.  
  
“Neville, look at the state of your hands! Don’t tell me you’ve been digging around the garden with a guest here!”  
  
“But he gave me a present, ma’am,” said Luna, holding up the gurdyroot.  
  
It was a lucky thing Gran couldn’t tell the difference between a gurdyroot and a bubotuber. Otherwise, she might have wondered why Luna needed cheering up.  
  
Neville washed his hands and prepared the tea. Gran asked Luna all the usual chit-chat questions: where she and her father lived, did she have any siblings, had both her parents been Ravenclaws. She even asked about Harry’s interview in _The Quibbler_ , which got Luna telling a story Neville hadn’t heard – that it had actually been Hermione Granger who’d arranged the article and how _The Quibbler_ had never used Rita Skeeter before or since. While Luna told the story, they all had tea and cake. When Luna finished, she tilted her teacup and examined the leaves.  
  
“I see you take Divination,” said Gran.  
  
“Yes, ma’am. It’s my favorite subject, along with Ancient Runes.”  
  
“Your interests are very different than Neville’s then. Has he told you? He’s already been offered a job at St. Mungo’s greenhouse.”  
  
Neville could have pinched himself. Was this Gran, boasting about him to another person?  
  
“No, he never told me.”  
  
“And what would you like to do when you finish school, dear?”  
  
“I hope to work for my father.”  
  
Gran looked at her sympathetically, as though she thought this was an absurdly impractical idea, but wouldn’t say so for fear of hurting Luna’s feelings. Only half an hour ago, Neville would have thought and done the very same thing.  
  
“Hey!” he exclaimed, looking out the window. “It’s Ron Weasley’s owl!”  
  
The owl fluttered inside and dropped a note in his lap. While it waited for his answer, it hovered around Luna, as if confused. Finally, it dropped a letter onto her lap, too.  
  
“It’s an invitation to Harry Potter’s coming of age party,” said Neville. “I didn’t know Harry’s birthday is the day after mine. May I go?”  
  
“Don’t forget we scheduled your Apparition test for that day.”  
  
“May I go _after_ the test?” he asked.  
  
“Yes, boy, go. It wouldn’t do to disappoint Harry Potter.”  
  
Neville scribbled his answer at the bottom of Ron’s note. “I’m writing that you got your invitation, but you have to ask your Dad,” he told Luna.  
  
“Thanks!”  
  
He finished the note and sent away the owl. “What are we doing for my coming of age?” he asked Gran.  
  
“Don’t you think we ought to spend that day with your parents?” She looked stern, but she was holding herself back in front of Luna.  
  
“Yes, of course, we should go to them. In fact, can we go sooner? Tomorrow or the next day?”  
  
Except for the day when he showed his first signs of magic, Neville had never seen Gran so happily surprised. Her eyes welled with tears, and he thought she might cry any second. She didn’t, and he was glad. He’d been around too much crying lately.  
  
But more than at him, Gran beamed at Luna, correctly attributing to her his change in attitude. In a million years, though, she’d never guess how and why.  
  
For a moment, Neville considered inviting Luna to join them at St. Mungo’s. He wanted to introduce her to Mum and Dad. But he decided he wanted them to himself, at least for the next few visits. In a certain way, he would be meeting them for the very first time, too.  
  



	32. Chapter 32

With Luna’s help, Neville put together a carefully planned package for his visit with parents. It included a quill, plenty of parchment, his copy of _The Quibbler_ , and most important of all, a Runes note which read “I love you, Mum and Dad.” Luna penned it for him, but it was his idea.  
  
He’d planned out just how he’d present the note. When nobody was paying attention, he’d slip it to Mum. He could hardly wait to see the look on their faces when they discovered that he knew. Then all he’d need to do was to get them alone and start asking questions. All he’d need to do. It was the hardest part of all.  
  
“Surprise!” cried Gran when they entered the room.  
  
Neither Mum nor Dad looked up.  
  
“They play it to the hilt,” thought Neville.  
  
“This visit was all Neville’s idea,” said Gran cheerily.  
  
“Look, Mum, I brought you _The Quibbler_!”  
  
“Oh, Neville, don’t give that to her. Luna wanted you to have it.”  
  
Now here was a complication Neville hadn’t counted on. Dumbfounded, he racked his brains for a convenient excuse, but none came to him. Mum was quicker, though. She snatched the magazine right out of his hands, took it into a corner and leafed through its pages wildly. All the while, she held it upside-down.  
  
“Don’t tear that, Alice dear, it’s a present from Neville’s girlfriend.”  
  
“Gran!” cried Neville, his face going warm.  
  
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, boy. You’ve chosen very well.”  
  
“Sure took me long enough,” thought Neville. But this wasn’t the time to worry about his next step with Luna. He had to figure out his next step with Mum and Dad. Now that Gran’s attention was on him, Mum slowed down her furious page-turning. She was actually taking in the news.  
  
Since Mum and Dad were playing their parts so well, Neville knew he had to act like his usual self, too. It wasn’t easy. He had to sit around and act depressed, and for once, the closed ward wasn’t depressing him. He was actually excited to be there.  
  
“Good morning, Mrs. Longbottom,” said Healer Anselm, entering the room. Gran stood up for him and gave Neville a significant look that he should do the same.  
  
“And how are my charges, today?”  
  
“The same,” sighed Gran.  
  
“The same as what, though?” wondered Neville. With the Healer in the room, he seized on the moment. “May I take Mum down to the greenhouse today?”  
  
“Neville! I told you never to ask again.”  
  
“But it’s been nearly a whole year. I know because last time was my birthday. Mum used to love Herbology, and it must be hard for her to be cooped up in here for so long.”  
  
Gran opened her mouth to argue, but Healer Anselm said, “I cannot spare any of the staff today. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Oh,” said Neville, sitting down. Now he really was depressed.  
  
“May I wheel her around the ward at least? I’ll give Dad a turn, too, but I’ll need help getting him out of bed.”  
  
“You heard what Healer Anselm said. He can’t spare the staff.”  
  
“But I can call up a few elves to help with Frank.”  
  
He snapped six times, and an elf apparated with each snap. “Get that patient out of bed and into a wheelchair,” he ordered them.  
  
The elves scrambled to obey. Dad was heavy, even for six of them, but their struggles made for just enough distraction for Neville to drop his note in Mum’s lap. Swaying over _The Quibbler_ , her white hair hanging in her face, Mum gave no sign of noticing.  
  
“All done, sir,” the largest elf said to Healer Anselm.  
  
“There you are, Neville,” said the Healer.  
  
“Thanks,” said Neville. He grabbed hold of the wheelchair handles and pushed Dad out of the room. “See you soon,” he called to Gran.  
  
The closed ward, being a permanent home for its patients, was one of the larger wards in St. Mungo’s, though it saw much less activity. Even still, there were Healers, nurses, patients, and family members all around. Neville pushed Dad past the other patients’ rooms. Healer Ryan was giving Gilderoy Lockhart his memory treatment. Fur-faced Agnes Gabbidon had her wireless on, listening to the new series chronicling Dumbledore’s life. The broadcast was about his defeat of Grindelwald.  
  
“That sounds good, doesn’t it?” said Neville. “Let’s go to the day room and see if we can pick it up over there.”  
  
Neville pushed Dad into the sunny day room and turned on the wireless. Being a veteran warrior himself, Dad was sure to be interested. But for all the notice Dad gave it, the announcer might as well have been advertising the latest in Super Duper Vanishing Cleanser. He leaned lopsided in his wheelchair, his mouth hanging open.  
  
Neville stood very close to him. “Dad, I know about you.”  
  
No reaction.  
  
“Dad, we’re alone. You can nod your head or something.”  
  
Still no reaction.  
  
Neville was near tears. “ _Please_ , Dad.”  
  
Nothing.  
  
Neville turned off the wireless. He pushed the wheelchair around the ward a few times. It seemed so unfair. He finally knew the truth about his parents, but he still couldn’t get a rise out of them. He wheeled Dad to the nurse’s station.  
  
“Could you get some elves to help me please?”  
  
The nurse summoned the elves, and once again, it was there was a big concerted effort getting Dad back into bed. The whole scene made Neville lose hope completely. But he’d said he was going to take both his parents around, and with all the trouble he’d caused getting Dad out of bed, he couldn’t back out now.  
  
“Mum’s turn,” he said with faked enthusiasm.  
  
Just for variety, he pushed Mum in the opposite direction as he’d pushed Dad. He couldn’t find anything to say. In silence, he completed one circle around the ward. Halfway through the second, he noticed it. Mum had not one but two issues of _The Quibbler_ on her lap. And more than that, she had her finger on a particular headline: VAMPIRES INVADE ST. MUNGO’S BLOOD BANK. Even without his Spectrespecs, Neville could guess what she meant. Spies were everywhere, even in St. Mungo’s.  
  
He pushed Mum toward Lockhart’s room. Healer Ryan had finished with him. He was all alone, sitting on his bed. He waved when he saw them coming.  
  
“Would you like an autograph?” he asked, flashing a beatific smile.  
  
For a second, Neville sped up, but then he realized: Lockhart had quill and parchment. It was the perfect opportunity.  
  
“Sure, I’ll have an autograph,” he said, pushing Mum into the room.  
  
Lockhart, boasting non-stop about his many fans, signed his autograph with a peacock feather quill and proudly handed it to Neville.  
  
“My Mum wants one, too.”  
  
Lockhart was thrilled, and while he signed, Neville surreptitiously handed Mum his own quill and parchment. The coast was clear and Mum wrote: _Forgive me. I never could have raised you._  
  
“Were you ill a long time?” whispered Neville.  
  
“I’m not ill at all,” said Lockhart.  
  
“Could you give me another autograph? For my friend Luna?”  
  
“I can spell that!” cried Lockhart. “L-U-N-A.”  
  
“That’s right,” said Neville.  
  
Lockhart signed and gave his masterpiece to Neville to admire. “Now how’s that for joined-up writing?”  
  
“Brilliant,” said Neville. He looked over at Mum’s parchment.  
  
 _The first four years I cannot remember at all._  
  
Neville did the math. It could not be a coincidence.  
  
“I was four when you were first injured. Four years later I was eight, and that’s when I showed my first signs of magic.”  
  
For a moment, their eyes met. Then Mum went back to writing.  
  
 _But even then, I could not have raised you. It took me a very long time to get to this state. And you have turned out very well, many thanks to your Gran. You make me proud. Please say you forgive me._  
  
Now Neville really was on the verge of tears. “Of course, I do. But what about Dad?”  
  
A nurse walked over to them. Mum bent over the parchment in her lap and began crumpling it up, looking to all the world the way she always did - like a helpless, hopeless closed ward patient.  
  
The way he was feeling, Neville didn’t know how he could pull off his own role. But his awkwardness worked in his favor. The nurse misinterpreted him completely.  
  
“Don’t tell me you got yourself stuck over here?”  
  
“Um . . . yeah. And I didn’t really know how I could leave.”  
  
“Just walk away. It’s not rude. He won’t remember that you did it.”  
  
Neville wheeled Mum out of the room.  
  
“See? Easy as pie,” said the nurse, walking in step with him. “Say, how did your Mum get that quill?”  
  
Mum put the quill in her mouth.  
  
“It’s mine,” he said, hastily taking it back. “I thought seeing someone else use a quill might remind . . . well, you know . . .”  
  
The nurse gave him a sympathetic pat on the arm. “Why don’t you take your Mum back to her room now? You’ve given her a lovely outing.”  
  
What could Neville do but listen? He actually had to pretend to be relieved by the suggestion. So he thanked the nurse and pushed Mum back to her room. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to answer about Dad, the most burning question on his mind.  
Back in the room, Mum dropped the crumpled parchment into his hands, and he pocketed it. Gran rolled her eyes. Then Mum did something Neville had never seen. She walked over to Dad’s bed, leaned over him, and in her soundless way, began to cry. She was answering his question.  
  
“Oh, Alice, don’t you start. It always sets me off when you do,” said Gran. She pulled out her handkerchief.  
  
Neville stood staring at them. “Mum cries over Dad sometimes?”  
  
“You’ve never seen us? I suppose you’ve been off at school whenever we’ve done it.” Gran dabbed at her eyes, but the handkerchief wasn’t helping. “Well, trot along to your greenhouse, boy. I’m sure you don’t fancy being around a pair of weeping women.”  
  
Neville didn’t know whether he should obey her or not.  
  
“Go on!”  
  
Neville turned and ran. He did not stop until he was safely off the ward and alone in a stairwell. He was crying, too. So Mum was all right, but Dad was still ill – incurably ill. But why was he crying about it? What had changed really? At least now, he knew he had one healthy parent. He ought to be rejoicing, but he could not. Even if Mum was well, she would live the rest of her life on the closed ward. And Neville knew it wasn’t just because she was hiding from the Death Eaters. She was staying to be with Dad.  
  
Neville dried his eyes and walked down to the greenhouse. It always made him feel better, and he certainly needed to wind down now.  
  
“Neville, how nice to see you!” said Mr. Klover as he went in.  
  
Neville tried to greet him with equal cheer, but he knew he failed when Mr. Klover said, “Hard visit with your parents?”  
  
“Umm . . .”  
  
“Neville, though I will soon be your employer, I hope we will always remain friends.”  
  
Neville looked up at him. Such a good-hearted man. At least this part of his future was certain and bright. “Mum and Gran were crying over Dad together. I’ve never seen them do it, but Gran says it happens all the time.”  
  
“Yes, I imagine it would,” said Mr. Klover. “It’s a terrible circumstance.”  
  
“Hey there, Neville!” called Jasmine, seemingly oblivious to his mood. “How’s the phoscolia? Did you get it to that perfect shade of red?”  
  
The phoscolia! He hadn’t thought of his flowers in weeks, what with his stay in the hospital wing, the news of Dumbledore’s death, and now, his discovery about Mum. Both plants were still in Hogwarts greenhouse. Professor McGonagall made sure everything in his room got packed, but only Professor Sprout knew about the phoscolia.  
  
“Let me guess,” said Jasmine. “The petals turned yellow, not red, but you don’t care because you’ve fallen head over heels with a blonde.” She laughed and elbowed Mr. Klover. “Look at him blush! I’m right!” She walked away chortling.  
  
This was getting to be too emotional a day for Neville. “Mr. Klover, normally I wouldn’t ask, but could you spare a gurdyroot?”  
  
“Accio gurdyroot!” said Mr. Klover pleasantly.  
  
Neville caught it mid-air. He felt it take action immediately. “Wow. How’d you get it so strong?”  
  
“The trick is in the soil.” And he launched into a long, detailed, very welcome discussion which made Neville feel completely in his own element. But after a while, he knew Gran was waiting for him and he had to get back upstairs. He thanked Mr. Klover for everything – the gurdyroot, the Herbology tips, but mostly, for his time.  
  
“May I give the root to my Mum?” he asked. “That way, it really will have gone for a St. Mungo’s patient.”  
  
“Scrupulously honest,” said Mr. Klover. “I like that in my employees. And I admire it even more in my friends.”  
  
They shook hands, and Neville walked back up to the closed ward. All was quiet in Mum and Dad’s room once again.  
  
“Take back your magazine, Neville,” said Gran. “We’re going home now.”  
  
The two copies of _The Quibbler_ were lying on Mum’s bed. He picked up the older issue, the one he hadn’t read yet. Gran would never know the difference. In its place, he left the gurdyroot.  
  
At home that night, Neville wrote two letters. He dashed off the first one quickly – a simple request that Professor Sprout send him the two phoscolia plants. The second was harder, personally and otherwise. Owls were being intercepted all the time. Without knowledge of Runes code, he’d just have to rely on his own circumspection.  
  
 _Dear Luna,  
  
I visited Mum and Dad today. It was tough, but good. I was 50% right, but without you, I’d still be at zero. You’ve changed my whole life.  
  
Now that you’ve given me a present, I’d like to give you something. I don’t think my present can be quite as big or special, but it’s something I’ve been working on for a while, and there’s nobody else in the world I would ever give them to.  
I can hardly wait to see you at the party._  
  
He hesitated over the closing. Should he write it? He thought he felt it. But no, he didn’t dare. He signed the letter, plain and simple. _Neville_.


	33. Chapter 33

Luna was so dreamy in the days after receiving her letter from Neville, Dad began teasing her relentlessly. He even composed a little song for that purpose:  
  
 _Once there was a wrackspurt named Neville Longbottom  
While he was around all else was forgotten  
If he gets too close, Ill seize him by his near drottom  
Luna’s Neville Longbottom_  
  
“Dad, please. “  
  
“Ah, look at her blush. My little girl is quite grown up. But I reckon I’ve raised a lady. I won’t have to seize poor Neville by the near drottom.”  
  
Luna felt herself go redder.  
  
“It does seem a shame you should have to wait all the way until the party to see him again.”  
  
Luna sighed.  
  
“Do you know what I think? Let’s invite Neville here. After all, he was kind enough to invite you to his house.”  
  
“Oh, Daddy! When?”  
  
“You can Floo him right now if you’d like.”  
  
Luna nearly jumped out of her chair, but then she thought of something.  
  
“Before he gets here, could we collect together old issues of _The Quibbler_ \- all the ones with articles about his parents? Before the injuries, I mean. The ones that record their Snorkack hunting. Neville doesn’t really know much. Until now, all he’s read about them was from _The Prophet_.”  
  
The teasing smile left Dad’s face. “That’s very considerate of you, Luna.”  
  
“Do you still have Spectrespecs from that far back?”  
  
“I think I can rustle up a pair. But you do realize, to amass all this will take a day’s work at least.”  
  
“That’s fine.”  
  
“Accio!” cried Dad.  
  
The attic door flew open and let out a large box which flew into the living room.  
  
“Those are back issues from the hardest years of the war. I have double copies of most, but some sold so well, I’ve got only one copy left, and I can’t give those away. They’ll have to be strictly on loan.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“All right, then. You Floo Neville and ask him to come tomorrow. I’ll help you get started, but I do have work to do today.”  
  
Luna and Neville spoke very briefly on the Floo. Despite the discomfort of it, Luna wished it could have been longer, but the fact was, the Floo Network was watched even more closely than owls.  
  
Luna worked for hours sorting through old issues. She read many, many articles, not just the ones about Neville’s parents. It was a fascinating history lesson, but what really caught her was how much her mother’s touch shone through. When she died, Luna’s knowledge of code was so unsophisticated, she could not possible appreciate that side of Mummy. Now she was feeling Mummy’s presence in an entirely new way.  
  
Luna gave Neville his present as soon as he arrived. Voracious about discovering everything he could about his parents, he spent the first hour of the visit just reading article after article. Luna didn’t mind a bit. It gave her pleasure to watch him enjoy his present.  
  
When he finally looked up at her, he said, “How can I ever thank you? What you’ve done for me is . . . is . . .”  
  
“You’re my very best friend. I’d do anything for you.”  
  
Her saying so only made Neville more tongue-tied.  
  
“Do you want to sit outside? Our garden isn’t as nice as yours, but you might like it.”  
“Yeah, sure.”  
  
But outside as inside, conversation didn’t flow as easily as it used to. An almost palpable shyness had grown between them. Even a casual touch had become so charged with emotion, neither dared make a move. Happy as they were in each other’s presence, it was still an uncomfortably awkward visit.  
  
Dad commented on it at dinner that night after Neville had gone home. “Not only have I raised a lady, she has chosen herself a gentleman.”  
  
“Yes, Daddy.”  
  
“We’ve always been open about everything. I hope we can be open about this, too.”  
  
The idea embarrassed Luna even more than being near Neville. She knew Dad meant well, but the most open and honest thing she could say to him was, “I wish Mummy were alive.”  
  
It hurt him, Luna knew. But he took the rebuff and said, “I will respect your privacy, but if you change your mind, you know I’m always here.” He never teased her again after that.  
  
Between her longing for Neville and her longing for Mummy, Luna launched herself into an intensely contemplative mood that lasted for days. She barely felt the need to eat or sleep. Her perceptions of the beyond had never been stronger. But though she received her mother’s familiar reassurance and love, it wasn’t the same as a real hug and spoken words of guidance.  
  
“Mummy, I need so much more,” she whispered to the night sky on Neville’s birthday. She’d sent him an owl, but she hadn’t seen him. He’d spent that day with his parents.  
  
If only she could get Mummy back the way Neville got his. She’d just open a box of old papers and discover that the secret lay there all along.  
  
And then it hit her. Grandfather’s manuscript. She could see it as clearly as if she were nine years old again, peeking through the window at Mummy’s experiment. Putting it away was the last thing she’d done before exploding the quill.  
  
Luna went out to the living room and turned on the light. The box was on top of the book shelves, just as it always had been. Knowing she was forbidden to use magic outside of school, Luna pulled over a chair and stood on it. But even on tiptoe, she could not reach the box. She had to stretch and use her wand to prod it forward. It was slow going, and Luna was exhilarated when she finally had it in her hands. She brought it back to her bedroom.  
  
As though a reward for her effort, the first thing she saw when she opened the box was a page in her mother’s handwriting. Even after seven years without her, Luna recognized it. But the odd thing was, Mummy’s writing wasn’t the only one on the note, and Luna knew perfectly well that she and Mummy had been all alone that day. She read the first few lines of the note.  
  
 _The Crumple-Horned Snorkack_  
LORD VOLDEMORT  
 _Tom Riddle_  
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE  
  
Then, the letters of TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE magically rearranged themselves into I AM LORD VOLDEMORT and back again as though in an endless game of Rack ‘n Rune. Below it, a sort of conversation ensued:  
  
HEIRESS OF RAVENCLAW, THE HEIR OF SLYTHERIN HAS VANQUISHED YOU  
 _Who is the Heir of Slytherin?_  
I, LORD VOLDEMORT  
 _You are not Lord Voldemort. You are Rowena Lovegood’s quill._  
I AM LORD VOLDEMORT’S HORCRUX.  
 _What is a Horcrux?_  
A HOME FOR MY SOUL FOR ALL ETERNITY.  
 _I don’t understand. Please explain._  
  
But no explanation was given. Only a few mysterious words appeared at the bottom of the page, and these were the most disquieting of all:  
  
 _Heir of Slytherin, the Heiress of Ravenclaw demands to know whom you murdered to create this Horcrux_  
THE UNSPEAKABLE WIZARD, ROWAN ROCKRIMMON  
  
Luna could not make sense of it. Had her mother been working out a new code, or was she actually writing to Voldemort? How could she have been? Voldemort had lost his powers years before then.  
  
“But we know he was not completely gone,” thought Luna. Perhaps Voldemort in a ghostly form was somehow able to use Mummy’s quill.  
  
The way they addressed each other was also strange. “Heir of Slytherin” and “Heiress of Ravenclaw.” Never once had Luna heard Mummy call herself that.  
  
A sudden sense of fear seized Luna. If Voldemort had been after Mummy because she was the Heiress of Ravenclaw, wouldn’t that put her, the surviving daughter, in similar danger? And Voldemort was back to full power now. Terrified, she ran to Dad’s room and pounded on his door.  
  
“What’s the matter!” he cried, rushing out of the room, his wand in hand.  
  
“I found a note!” she cried. “It was the Snorkack!”  
  
Dad lowered his wand. “You had a nightmare about the Snorkack?”  
  
“No, no! I found a note! The Snorkack was after Mummy - look!” She gave him the note.  
  
He put a calming hand on her shoulder. “Accio glasses,” he said. “Lumos.” They read the note together by his wandlight.  
  
“What does it mean, Daddy? What’s a Horcrux?”  
  
“I’m afraid it’s dark magic, sweetie.”  
  
“But how could Voldemort do dark magic on Mummy if he had no powers? And what about the ending? He said he murdered Grandfather to make the Horcrux.”  
  
Dad’s eyebrows wrinkled into a frown. He did not explain, but asked instead, “Where did you find this?”  
  
“It was in the box with Grandfather’s manuscript. I was thinking of Mummy, and then I just knew - the manuscript was the last thing Mummy was reading before she died.” Even in the summer heat, Luna shivered. “Truth came out, just like the quill said it would, but all _hasn’t_ been discovered. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”  
  
Dad summoned a bottle from the bathroom. “As much as I don’t like to rely on potions, I want you to drink this. It’s for dreamless sleep. You’re a bundle of nerves, and you haven’t had a decent night’s rest in a week.”  
  
“But the note! This is the clue we’ve been waiting for all these years! I can’t sleep now!”  
  
Dad took her by the hand and led her back to her bedroom. He pointed to the clock on her wall. “See that? It’s past midnight. It’s no longer Neville’s birthday, but Harry Potter’s. In a few hours, you’ll be at his party. So sit down and I’ll tell you something his mother said when he was born, which is just about when Mummy and I found out we were having you.”  
  
Luna sat on the edge of her bed. Dad sat beside her.  
  
“Lily Potter once said that having babies in the middle of the war was the best possible revenge against Voldemort. Of course, she didn’t know just how prophetic her words were, but the point is: you’ve got to go on celebrating the good things in life, even when bad things are happening all around you. This note may prove that Voldemort was behind Mummy’s death, and we needed to know that, but it’s not going to bring her back. Neither is sitting up all night worrying about it, or disappointing yourself _and_ Neville tomorrow by making yourself too tired to go to the party. Do you understand?”  
  
Luna nodded.  
  
“Then drink.”  
  
Luna obeyed. Dad waited as she fell asleep, just like he used to do when they first lost Mummy. She awoke very late the next morning.  
  
“How are you feeling?” asked Dad when she walked into the kitchen.  
  
“Fine.”  
  
She poured herself a bowl of cereal. Dad was halfway through Grandfather’s manuscript.  
  
“What did you find out?” she asked.  
  
“Many, many things. Your grandfather was truly an exceptional wizard. It’s a shame none of us knew him. You ought to read this after I’m done. I daresay a girl with an ‘O’ on her Divination O.W.L. is up to the challenge of wading through the writings of an Unspeakable.”  
  
“I meant about Mummy.”  
  
“I know, sweetie. And I’m sorry to say this, but I can’t tell you yet. It’s a Snorkack matter, so I have to go through the usual security channels first. I won’t get clearance to put it into _The Quibbler_ , but I will make my case for you. You have a right to know everything.”  
  
“Who are the security channels now that Professor Dumbledore has gone on?”  
  
“I cannot tell you _that_ , either.”  
  
Luna pouted. It was bad enough that she should be made to wait to hear the full truth, but there was a strong possibility she might not be told anything at all. With Professor McGonagall, she might have a chance, but what if the decision was in the hands of a relative stranger, like Alastor Moody? Still, she did not argue. She was a war journalist’s daughter, and she understood the rules.  
  
“So, tell me, what are your plans for the party?”  
  
It all seemed like such a triviality now. Luna shrugged and said, “All the guests have to be there before noon so we can surprise Harry. I told Ginny I’d be early to help with the decorations.”  
  
“Sounds like fun.”  
  
“But I can’t stop thinking about the note! How can I possibly have fun?”  
  
“Think about something happy.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
Dad grinned. “Surely you can think of something.” And then he began to sing:  
  
 _Once there was a wrackspurt named Neville Longbottom  
While he was around all else was forgotten  
If he gets close, then he has my blessing  
Luna’s Neville Longbottom_  
  
Luna got up from the table and threw her arms around Dad’s neck.  
  
“Oh, so you like the song now,” he said, rumpling her hair.  
  
“I love you, Daddy,” she said, squeezing hard. Then, an idea struck her. “Can a gurdyroot go through the Floo?”  
  
“I’ve never tried it, actually, but I don’t think it should be a problem.”  
  
“Goody. I’m going to get ready for the party.” She gave Daddy a peck on the cheek. “And I know I’m going to have fun.”  
  



	34. Chapter 34

Ginny gave Luna a warm “Hi!” when she came through the Floo. Hermione was already there, putting finishing touches on a big banner which read ‘Happy Birthday Harry’ and was bordered by pictures of little flying broomsticks.  
  
“Where are Harry and Ron?” Luna asked.  
  
“The Apparition Department,” said Ginny. “They’re both taking the test today.”  
  
“Neville is also taking his Apparition test today. His birthday was yesterday, you know.” A little shyly, she added, “Can you put his name on the banner?”  
  
With a wave of her wand, Hermione added the words ‘and Neville’ beneath the ‘Happy Birthday Harry.’  
  
“And can you make him a picture of a _Mimbulus mimbletonia_?” asked Luna eagerly.  
  
“How about some vervain instead?” said Hermione. “A vine makes a better border.”  
  
Luna agreed, and while Hermione worked on keeping the vervain from tangling around the broomsticks, Mrs. Weasley walked in with a cake. After Ginny introduced Luna, she said, “Yesterday was Neville’s birthday. Can you add his name to the cake, too?”  
  
“That’s a very nice gesture, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley, doing it in an instant.  
  
Luna looked from the cake to the banner. “Neville will be rather pleased, I think.”  
  
Hermione, Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley all exchanged knowing looks, and Luna understood it wasn’t because they thought she was loony.  
  
“May I help with anything, Mrs. Weasley?” asked Luna.  
  
Mrs. Weasley gave her some food platters to set out, and then other guests began to arrive.  
  
“Hagrid!” Ginny and Hermione shouted at once.  
  
But pleased as they were at seeing him, his pleasure was ten times greater. He picked Ginny up and swung her over his head as though she were as light as Arnie the Pygmy Puff.  
  
“Hagrid!” cried Mrs. Weasley.  
  
Hagrid lowered Ginny back to the ground. “I’m sorry, Molly. I just couldn’t stop meself. See, she’s me first N.E.W.T. student!” He grew suddenly anxious. “Yeh are going on at N.E.W.T. level, aren’t yeh?”  
  
“Of course,” said Ginny, catching her balance.  
  
“She didn’t get an ‘O’ on that O.W.L. for nothing,” said Mrs. Weasley proudly.  
  
“How’bout you, Luna? Continuin’?”  
  
“Ummm,” said Luna vaguely, but she was saved from answering by the sudden apparition of Professor Lupin and Tonks.  
  
“Well, well, our honeymooners have arrived!” gushed Mrs. Weasley. “So, how do you like married life, Nymphadora?”  
  
“Molly, my name is Mrs. N. Tonks-Lupin.” She looked around imploringly, “Everyone, _please_ keep calling me Tonks.”  
  
“Dad sends his congratulations,” said Luna.  
  
“Thank him from us,” said Professor Lupin. Luna had never seen him looking so well and happy.  
  
“I get congratulations, too,” said Hagrid. “I was gonna wait with this till Harry arrived, but what the heck – I’ve been made new Head of House for Gryffindor.”  
  
“Oh, Hagrid!” cried Ginny, running to him and hugging his leg.  
  
Hermione’s reaction was more tepid. “That’s wonderful, Hagrid.”  
  
“Happy news all around!” said Mrs. Weasley. “Well, everything’s finished. Who wants to see Bill and Fleur’s wedding album?”  
  
Though nobody particularly did, they couldn’t think of any way of extracting themselves from it, so they all sat around politely admiring the album. The new couple, they were informed, was now honeymooning in France.  
  
“I’m home!” called Mr. Weasley, apparating at the door. “Got the afternoon off without so much as a raised eyebrow. The Ministry will do anything to ingratiate itself to Harry these days.” He looked at the group of them gathered around the wedding pictures. “So that’s everyone but Fred and George, then, is it?”  
  
“Yes, they’re late as usual,” said Mrs. Weasley. “And it’s nearly twelve o’clock, too.”  
  
“Never fear, Mum,” called one twin from the door.  
  
“Timing is everything at a surprise party.”  
  
The two swaggered inside, and while Mrs. Weasley upbraided them, Mr. Weasley slipped out. Luna knew precisely what he was up to. He was checking the front door in case Fred and George left any surprise birthday presents.  
  
“We’d better think about hiding,” said Hermione.  
  
A long debate ensued about who should go where. Hagrid, of course, was literally the biggest problem. None of the adult wizards felt a single vanishing spell on so large a person could possibly work.  
  
“We could divide you up,” suggested Fred.  
  
“Yeah, if I do your top half, and Fred takes –”  
  
“I think I’ll step into the kitchen, jus’ the same,” said Hagrid.  
  
At long last, Ron, Harry, and Neville apparated to the doorstep, each within seconds of the other. Shouts of “Congratulations!” and “Happy Birthday” filled the room.  
  
Harry, who was genuinely surprised, made to enter and thank all his friends as Ron followed, but Neville held up a warning arm and said, “Hang on!” Then he levitated a vine-covered cup and let it hover over the twins.  
  
“Watch it, mate. These jackets cost more than a few Galleons, you know.”  
  
“C’mon, Nev! Tip it over!” cheered Ron.  
  
Neville let it shake a little, just enough to keep everyone laughing at the cowed faces of the twins, but he didn’t dare let it spill.  
  
“Accio,” said Mr. Weasley, pulling it toward himself. “Whew! Stinksap. And I thought I checked so thoroughly.”  
  
“It was fairly well camouflaged behind some vervain,” said Neville.  
  
“Oh, how perfect! Look at the banner,” said Ginny, pointing upward.  
  
Neville’s eyes shone brightly when he read it. Soon everyone was wishing him a “happy birthday,” too.  
  
They ate and talked and were all very cheerful, in spite of the fact that the Weasleys’ clock said they were all in mortal peril. For a few hours, the war against Voldemort seemed far away, even to its chief warriors. Sitting on the floor beside Neville, Luna enjoyed herself immensely. She still felt that sense of shy expectation, so she could not quite relax, but she was certainly happy.  
  
Hagrid, who’d come the furthest distance, was the first to leave, and the twins disapparated shortly afterward. Then, much to her disappointment, Luna’s father appeared in the fireplace, and she had no desire to go home so soon.  
  
“I’m sorry to interrupt the festivities,” he said. “May I come through?”  
  
“Certainly,” said Mr. Weasley.  
  
Dad jumped through the fire. Mrs. Weasley sent him over a cold drink.  
  
“Breaking news?” asked Professor Lupin, anxiously.  
  
“It’s more history than news,” said Dad. “Is it secure here? Can I speak freely?”  
  
“This is the chosen home of ‘the Chosen One,’” said Mr. Weasley. “Security doesn’t get tighter than this.”  
  
“Ministry security,” said Dad, disdainfully.  
  
“I’ve put my own additions in,” said Mr. Weasley.  
  
That seemed good enough for Dad, but instead of addressing the group the way Luna expected him to, he stepped toward Harry Potter and offered his hand.  
  
“Leonard Lovegood, publisher of _The Quibbler_. It’s an honor to meet you at last.”  
  
Harry politely shook Dad’s hand. Strangers probably introduced themselves to him all the time, but he was clearly not comfortable with it.  
  
“May I have a private word?” asked Dad.  
  
Harry hesitated and looked at Hermione. She must have told him about _The Quibbler_. But trusted a paper as it might be, Harry was wont to avoid the press.  
  
“It’s about the Ravenclaw Horcrux,” said Dad.  
  
Luna’s heart skipped a beat. It was about Mummy’s note! But Harry was even more shocked than she. He jumped to his feet, wand at the ready, and cried, “WHERE?”  
  
Ron and Hermione tried calming him down, but Dad’s words did the trick.  
  
“Destroyed. Just give me a few minutes. I’ll explain it all to you.”  
  
Harry and Dad went into the kitchen. Everyone began whispering amongst themselves – Ron with Hermione, Lupin with Tonks, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley with Ginny. Luna kept her eyes on the door Dad and Harry had gone through. So Harry was the security channel now. He of all people might be the most sympathetic, having lost both his parents to Voldemort, but Luna’s stomach was doing somersaults.  
  
“Luna, will you read my tea leaves?” asked Neville.  
  
She understood what he was doing. He was trying to distract her.  
  
“Umm . . . the signs are favorable,” she said vaguely, unable to concentrate. Her eyes strayed to the door once again, and Dad and Harry came out. They stepped to the front of the room.  
  
“Can we disconnect the Floo?” asked Harry.  
  
Mr. Weasley disconnected it.  
  
“Okay,” said Harry. “This is an official, top secret meeting of the Order of the Phoenix. Whoever isn’t here has some other job for Dumbledore, so we’ll leave them to it. What we say now can only be discussed among the people in this room. Look around and remember who is here.”  
  
Everyone did as Harry said. Harry stepped back and let Dad have the floor.  
  
“What I am about to say is classified information. Professor Dumbledore did not give me permission to put it into _The Quibbler_. As a matter of fact, I only learned of it myself after his death in his final letter of instructions, delivered by his phoenix. Without a doubt, several of you received similar letters.”  
  
If anyone had, they did not acknowledge it.  
  
“Aside from instructions about how to continue _The Quibbler_ , my letter concerned a dark magical creation called a Horcrux.”  
  
Tonks let out a little scream. “He has one?”  
  
“He had seven,” said Harry, “but as of now, four have been destroyed.”  
  
“But what _is_ a Horcrux?” asked Luna.  
  
“It’s a split-off piece of Voldemort’s soul, hidden inside a valuable magical object,” Harry explained. “He tried getting one from each one of the Hogwarts founders.”  
  
A chill made Luna tremble as she thought of what Voldemort had called Mummy: the Heiress of Ravenclaw. She felt Neville inch toward her. She drew strength from him.  
  
“And the trouble is,” Harry went on, “as long as the Horcruxes exist, Voldemort can’t be killed.”  
  
“You-Know-Who can’t die?” Neville repeated.  
  
“He’s not invincible,” said Harry. “We have to find and destroy the Horcruxes.”  
  
“Which is a lot easier said than done,” said Ron, “because nobody knows where he hid them.”  
  
“But you’ve found one,” Hermione said to Dad.  
  
“Luna and I discovered the fate of one last night, yes. It was a quill, a family heirloom, that belonged to my wife.”  
  
Neville took Luna’s hand in his.  
  
“Was your wife descended from Rowena Ravenclaw?” Hermione asked.  
  
“Rowena Rockrimmon.” said Lupin. “Of course!”  
  
“She was named for her father, actually,” said Luna.  
  
“Would that be Rowan Rockrimmon?” asked Mr. Weasley. “I’ve seen his memorial plaque in the Ministry. Wasn’t he an Unspeakable who –”  
  
“Did _not_ die by accident,” Dad finished for him. He looked at Luna. “You helped solve two family mysteries last night.”  
  
“But how?” asked Luna as Neville squeezed her hand tighter. “I don’t understand.”  
  
“Professor Dumbledore’s letter can explain it best,” said Dad, pulling out the long parchment. His eyes scanned over a few paragraphs, and he began reading aloud:  
  
 _You will, of course, remember the case of Ginny Weasley and the diary. That diary, which not only had the power to possess her, slowly and almost completely drained the life out of her. From the moment Harry Potter handed me that diary, I could see that it utilized the most heinous of dark magic. I knew then that it was a Horcrux._  
  
Dad paused to let the Weasley’s react.  
  
“Did you know?” Ginny asked her parents.  
  
“Dumbledore told us in a letter just like this one,” said Mr. Weasley.  
  
“You should have told me,” said Ginny, resentfully.  
  
“We were working on that,” began Mr. Weasley.  
  
“But it was over, and you bounced back so wonderfully that we – well, I – just wanted to put it all behind us,” said Mrs. Weasley.  
  
The quiver in her voice told Luna that Mrs. Weasley was near tears. Ginny said nothing else, so Dad went on with Professor Dumbledore’s letter.  
  
 _All the evidence I have compiled since the discovery of that diary indicates that it was not Voldemort’s sole Horcrux. Unfortunately, my evidence leads me to guess that Rowena’s quill was a Horcrux as well. She must have discovered this herself somehow, and when she sought to destroy the Horcrux, it destroyed her, too._  
  
Luna hid her face in her knees. She was vaguely aware of a warm arm enveloping her.  
  
 _All of this is still a guess, however. I do not have concrete facts, and as I told you long ago, the best, if only, source of them is Luna._  
  
Luna, her face still hidden, shuddered and sighed. The warm arm let her lean into it.  
  
 _As Luna may have told you, I called her into my office last March. At the time, I gave her to believe that our discussion was purely academic. I did not reveal to her my main goal: to trigger her memory and deduce once and for all the precise cause of Rowena’s death._  
  
Luna breathed in heavily. She hadn’t suspected a thing.  
  
 _I tried the gentlest means at my disposal. Had Luna shown less reluctance, I would have taken her directly into my Pensieve, but because she was resistant, I relied instead on her Divination. I do not admit Divination as evidence in the Wizengamot, nor do I base any personal decisions upon it, but I would be foolish to deny that there is truth in it, especially from someone with such marked abilities as Luna’s._  
  
“What a compliment,” said Mr. Weasley.  
  
“Really!” agreed Lupin. “The Seers used to beg Dumbledore for an opportunity to show him their stuff. I don’t think he had faith in a single one.”  
  
Harry coughed slightly as Dad said, “Remus, Arthur, please.”  
  
“It’s all right, Daddy,” said Luna, raising her head. “Professor Dumbledore warned me then about the Helium Huckster.”  
  
Dad gave her a funny look of amusement, pride, and sadness. With Neville’s arm still around her, she did not lower her face again, even though every eye in the room was on her. Dad continued reading.  
  
 _Her results were telling. Between her crystal ball gazing and my legillimency, we saw Tom Riddle, now known as Lord Voldemort, searching Sophie Rockrimmon’s house as she slept. Luna recognized the youthful vision of her grandmother immediately, but she could never have seen Tom Riddle. Yet there he was – from the crystal ball to her own mind. I saw him for myself.  
  
This hinted strongly to what I already suspected: that Tom murdered Rowan, stole the quill from Sophie, and turned it into a Horcrux. How the quill, now a dangerous and volatile magical object, returned itself to Sophie’s hands and passed to Rowena’s is no mystery at all. It was my own Tillhiasit charm, which I cast over Sophie to protect her from Tom’s greed. And this grievous error, at so dear a cost to you and Luna, I take with me to the Ultimate Justice of the grave._  
  
“He blamed himself!” cried Luna.  
  
“What’s the Tillhiasit charm?” asked Hermione.  
  
“Professor Dumbledore’s personal security charm. His own invention, probably. He cast it over Luna’s grandmother when she was expecting my wife, promising it would work for future generations, which in fact, it has.”  
  
“So that’s why nobody can steal from you,” said Ginny.  
  
“Not for lack of trying,” mumbled Dad.  
  
“Professor Dumbledore oughtn’t have blamed himself,” said Luna. “He meant to protect Granny.”  
  
As she said it, she felt his presence very near her. She could even hear him. “You are kind to me, Luna.”  
  
Overpowered, she hid her face in her knees once again. Dad read more.  
  
 _Nevertheless, with all of this, we are still lacking in concrete facts, and we must have them. The very safety of the world depends on it. If I am correct, then Rowena’s death has saved millions of lives, but we must know for certain. And for this, we need Luna._  
  
Neville pulled her closer.  
  
 _I have not called Luna back to my office for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I have been pursuing leads to other Horcruxes. As of this writing, I am preparing to go in search of one. If you are reading this letter, it means I did not survive the attempt. And that leaves it to you to take that last step with Luna, which is probably best in any case. To this end, I offer you and Luna use of my Pensieve whenever you choose. It will be kept by Professor McGonagall at Hogwarts, who will receive a list of people permitted to use it, yourself, Luna, and Neville Longbottom among them._  
  
“If I had to relive it that vividly,” thought Luna, “I would want Neville’s comfort afterward.” She leaned her head on his shoulder.  
  
 _But of course, for Luna’s sake, the most painless thing would be for the truth to simply come out, as in the quill’s song._  
  
“The song that came out of your mother’s quill,” said Neville. “You sang it for me on the train.”  
  
“You sang it for me in first year also,” said Ginny. “I never told anybody. The same words were in the diary.”  
  
“So it’s a clue!” exclaimed Ron. “All Horcruxes use those words.”  
  
“No,” said Luna, looking up. “Those are not Voldemort’s words. A lady sang them. It was the voice of the quill.”  
  
“You mean, Rowena Ravenclaw’s voice,” said Hermione.  
  
“I always thought so,” said Luna. “Perhaps Voldemort used the quill to write the diary, and the truth came out there, too.”  
  
“You may just be right, Luna,” said Dad.  
  
And though her eyes were welling with tears so that she was sure she would cry any moment, Luna sang the song. If anyone thought she was behaving strangely, they didn’t say so.  
  
 _Ephemeral justice, elusive truth  
take time to be uncovered,  
but truth comes out in many years,  
and all has been discovered._  
  
Dad reached behind his glasses to dab the corners of his eyes. “Truth has come out. Luna found a note last night – a written conversation between Rowena and the Horcrux.”  
  
Dad passed around the letter for everyone to see. Luna, who at last gave in to her tears, hid her face from view again.  
  
Everyone fell into silent thought. Finally, Harry broke it.  
  
“We still have far to go, but this means we’re one step closer. If Luna hadn’t discovered this, I’d be wandering around the world, that much blinder.”  
  
“Your mother died a heroine’s death,” said Mrs. Weasley. “The world owes her so much.”  
  
Luna did not look up, though she could feel every eye in the room was still on her. But sad as she was that her mother’s life had to be cut off in so horrible a way, she had the comfort of her friends. Mummy really was a heroine, and this room full of heroes acknowledged it.  
  
Luna felt someone stroking her hair. Knowing it wasn’t Daddy, she raised her head and looked into Neville’s warm and comforting eyes.  
  
“Come outside with me,” he said.  
  
Luna glanced at Daddy, who nodded in approval. Without focusing on anybody else, Luna let Neville lead her out of the Weasley’s house and into their backyard. In the midst of the overgrowth was a cluster of chairs. Neville mutely invited her to sit.  
  
Someone had left an empty glass on a table.  
  
“Scourgify,” said Neville, cleaning it. “Aguamenti.”  
  
He handed her a cool glass of water.  
  
“I love being seventeen,” he said while she drank it. Then he wordlessly summoned a potted yellow plant to himself, knelt down in front of her, and put it in her lap.  
  
“I had two, actually,” he said. “But I want you to have this one. It has a history.”  
  
He pulled a note out of his pocket and gave it to her.  
  
 _Once upon a time, a boy at Hogwarts school went to the Room of Requirement. The room was filled with so many things to distract him, he almost didn’t notice a rare little flower sitting alone on a shelf. The Room kept the flower alive, but what it really needed was sunshine, fresh air, and most of all, someone to take care of it. So the boy took care of it, but he made mistakes. He didn’t see it for what it was and he even tried forcing it to be something else. But this flower would not be forced. It looked delicate, but it was hardy. And finally, the thick-headed boy saw that this flower was so special and so magical, he wondered if he was really good enough for it. But it’s too late. He already loves her and he wants to keep her._  
  
“Oh, Neville!” she cried. “It’s the most beautiful thing –” She couldn’t go on. She reached for him. He drew close, and they kissed.  
  
Luna had never been kissed before. She knew that it was the kissing that made mistletoe so dangerous, but kissing Neville didn’t feel dangerous at all. She quite liked it.  
  
“That’s the good thing about herbologists,” said Luna when they pulled apart. “You know precisely how to guard against nargle infestation.”  
  
He kissed her again because he understood.  
  



End file.
